Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BIRMINGHAM CORPORATION BILL

CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

BIRKENHEAD CORPORATION (MERSEY TUNNEL APPROACHES) BILL

Read a Second time and committed.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY)

Bill to regulate the expenditure on Capital Account and on lending to other persons by the Greater London Council during the financial period from 1st April, 1965 to 30th September, 1966; and for other purposes, read the first time and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

Oral Answers to Questions — TECHNOLOGY

Atomic Energy Authority (Military Work)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Technology what proportion of the work of the Atomic Energy Authority is for military purposes; and whether this proportion is increasing or decreasing.

The Minister of Technology (Mr. Frank Cousins): The proportion of the work of the Authority devoted to military purposes is at present decreasing. It would not be in accordance with the customary practice to disclose the exact figure.

Mr. Digby: Has the right hon. Gentleman now had a chance to look at the general work of the Authority and the proportion of that work devoted to various things like the Central Electricity Generating Board and to satisfy himself that these resources are employed to the best advantage, particularly the scientists involved?

Mr. Cousins: Yes, Sir. In a general sense, the examination has taken place and I am quite satisfied that the correct proportion of time is being devoted to appropriate work.

Machine Tools

Mr. Dudley Smith: asked the Minister of Technology if he will make a statement on the results of his visits to machine tool works and his study of this field of technology.

Mr. Hamling: asked the Minister of Technology if he will make a statement on his plans for the building of Government factories to manufacture machine tools.

Mr. Cousins: My visits to machine tool works have provided a valuable opportunity for seeing and discussing some of the problems of this industry. They form a part of the study which my Department is making of these problems and in the light of the results of this study I shall formulate whatever proposals seem suited to increase the efficiency of the industry.

Mr. Smith: In view of what the right hon. Gentleman has seen, has he abandoned the idea of State-owned machine tool industries?

Mr. Cousins: Certainly not. I said that we would undertake a study and take such steps as are appropriate.

Mr. Lubbock: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that when he made his statement on computers he promised to give the House an equivalent statement on machine tools within the next few weeks? When will that be?

Mr. Cousins: It is my intention to give such a statement as soon as possible. As I have said, we wish to take as much cognisance as we can of the views expressed so that we may make an appropriate report and statement.

Mr. Marples: Can the right hon. Gentleman say now when we are likely to get this statement?

Mr. Cousins: It is not possible to go further at the moment than to say that I will present it as soon as the necessary information is available.

Dounreay Reactor Establishment

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Technology if he will make plans for the manufacture and construction of automation machines at the Experimental Reactor Establishment at Dounreay, Scotland, in view of the demand for such machines; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Cousins: For the reason I gave my hon. and learned Friend on 24th March, it is not possible to make plans for the purpose he suggests.

Mr. Hughes: Does not my right hon. Friend realise that I am suggesting that the Dounreay station should be not only an experimental station but have its scope enlarged so as to be constructive and in that way draw industry to the north-east of Scotland where it is very badly needed? This would be industry of a constructive kind in which the Germans and other nations are competing adversely with British industry.

Mr. Cousins: I am aware of the intention behind my hon. and learned Friend's Question, but in a written Reply on 24th March I made it clear that it is not possible to exercise the power of the Atomic Energy Authority to take over production of this type of equipment. The legal powers do not exist whereby the Authority could do so.

New Science-based Industries

Mr. Ian Gilmour: asked the Minister of Technology what new science-based industries he proposes to establish during 1965.

Mr. Cousins: I have at present nothing to add to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 1st December to the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Stratton Mills).

Mr. Gilmour: Surely this is yet another example of Labour plans being ready to swing into operation immediately.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that in the unlikely event of his actually doing something about this he will act largely through private enterprise?

Mr. Cousins: I will give no such assurance, and I would not accept the hon. Gentleman's view that we are unlikely to act.

Computer Technicians

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Technology whether he will set up a training scheme for technicians on the application of computers, such as system designers and programmers.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Richard Marsh): A number of training courses in computer technology are already available, but the Department is examining with others concerned all aspects of the supply of trained computer staff, including the possible need for additional training facilities.

Mr. Digby: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that it is necessary to encourage the further use of computers, that there is a shortage of these people and that some encouragement by the Government, probably indirect encouragement, is still necessary?

Mr. Marsh: I agree that the position in which we now find ourselves is such that we are faced with certain shortages in this respect. This is exactly why the Ministry of Technology was established. We have set up an informal working group in the Ministry of Technology to deal with this subject. The number of office computers installed in Britain is expected to double in the next two years from the present number of around 800. The Government recognise the difficulty and are doing something about it. If someone had done something else about it before we did, the problem would not be so bad.

Computer Advisory Unit

Mr. Peter Walker: asked the Minister of Technology if the Computer Advisory Unit will be invited to consider the balance of payments implications when advising on computer requirements over the whole public sector.

Mr. Cousins: The functions of the Computer Advisory Unit are limited to objective technical appraisals. Decisions on purchases remain with the procurement authorities.

Mr. Walker: Why, Sir?

Mr. Cousins: The role of the unit will be to make technical proposals. We have said this on a number of occasions. This is the purpose which was agreed when the statement about computers was made. It is not designed to tell people what they should buy but only why.

Mr. Maxwell: Will my right hon. Friend consider using his good offices with his colleagues in the Government to get them to insert into the Government's procurement programme a condition that firms be allowed to sell certain products and services to the Government only if they have computers on their premises?

Mr. Cousins: That may be desirable in some senses, but it would be very difficult to establish.

Public Ownership

Mr. Peter Walker: asked the Minister of Technology what proposals he has for extending public ownership in the computer, telecommunications, electronics or machine tool industries.

Mr. Cousins: We are studying the problems of these industries and we shall formulate whatever proposals seem best suited to increase their efficiency.

Mr. Walker: The right hon. Gentleman has now been Minister for six months. Will he confirm that during that six months he has come across no section which he wishes to put into public ownership?

Mr. Cousins: I have come across a number which I would like to bring into public ownership. That answers the question directed to me.

Mr. Marples: Can we have from the right hon. Gentleman those industries which he thinks should be brought under public ownership?

Mr. Cousins: The right hon. Gentleman will recall that when the computer statement was made it was made clear from this side of the House that we should not bring in any proposals for public

ownership other than by a direct approach to public ownership. We would not bring them in by subterfuge.

Telecommunications Industry

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Minister of Technology what proposals he has for the telecommunications industry; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Cousins: I have arranged for studies of this industry to be set in hand, but I am not yet ready to make any specific proposals.

Mr. Morrison: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that at the moment there is some confusion about where his responsibility ends and that of the Postmaster-General begins? Can he inform the House where his responsibility for telecommunications ends and that of the Postmaster-General begins?

Mr. Cousins: There is no misunderstanding about where my responsibilities or those of the Postmaster-General start. There are many matters concerning technology which we shall have to discuss jointly. If the question is put differently, I can probably answer it.

Mr. Marples: Is this one of those industries which the right hon. Gentleman considers should be brought under public ownership?

Mr. Cousins: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean telecommunications or the Post Office?

Mr. Marples: Telecommunications. The right hon. Gentleman has asked me a question. My question is whether he believes that the telecommunications industry ought to be brought under public ownership.

Mr. Cousins: We have already said that we shall not make statements on public ownership without fully considering their implications. If they are necessary they will be brought before the House. This is not a question which needs to be answered.

D.S.I.R. Staff (Promotions)

Mrs. Renée Short: asked the Minister of Technology what steps he is taking to ensure proper promotion prospects for members of the staff of the Department


of Scientific and Industrial Research who successfully complete sandwich courses, in view of the fact that there is a wastage of approximately one in 10.

Mr. Marsh: The academic achievements of sandwich course students are taken fully into account in an annual promotion review of staff in the scientific classes and in competitions held by the Civil Service Commissioners.

Mrs. Short: Is my hon. Friend aware that when these officers return, having gained their qualifications, they return to the grades which they held before? In view of the cost to the D.S.I.R. of permitting these officers to take their courses, does he not think that they should return at higher professional or scientific grades?

Mr. Marsh: I appreciate the argument behind my hon. Friend's supplementary question. This is a real problem. One is faced with the position that many members of the staff have obtained these qualifications other than by sandwich courses, and it seems unfair that preferential treatment should be given to those who have taken their qualifications by means of sandwich courses, paid for by the taxpayer, over and above those who have taken the same courses, probably in their own time.

Mr. J. H. Osborn: Can the Minister of State say whether the D.S.I.R. is still in existence?

Mr. Marsh: I am not a Minister of State. The question about the D.S.I.R. does not arise out of this problem. The question is whether people who have taken these courses of study by one means should be given preference over others who have taken them by other means.

International Electro-Technical Commission, Tokio

Mr. Onslow: asked the Minister of Technology if he will offer assistance to ensure that there is adequate representation of the British electronics industry at the International Electro-Technical Commission meetings in Tokio in September.

Mr. Cousins: I am not aware of any difficulty regarding representation of the electronics industry at these meetings, but if the hon. Member has a specific point in mind and will write to me I will look into it.

Mr. Onslow: Will the right hon. Gentleman at least undertake to consult the British Standards Institute on the subject of British attendance at this conference?

Mr. Cousins: The answer simply is, yes. It is involved in it.

Mr. Snow: In view of the imbalance of trade between Japan and this country and our undue dependence on the export of consumer goods to that country, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind how important it is to try to increase the exports of this technological industry, and could all the documentation be printed in Japanese?

Mr. Cousins: That is a very interesting suggestion, but if we were to print all documentation in the languages of the various countries to which we export, we would have a terrific task.

TSR2 Equipment

Mr. Marten: asked the Minister of Technology what proportion of the equipment in TSR2 comes from industry under his sponsorship.

Mr. Cousins: Apart from the airframe and engines, I understand from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation that almost all major items of equipment in TSR2 come from the electronics and computer industries.

Mr. Marten: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many technicians from the TSR2 project are now applying to go to South Africa to help build up the aircraft industry there? Can he say what steps he is taking to see that the development of the highly developed avionics of the TSR2 is continued in this country?

Mr. Cousins: This is not a matter directly concerned with the Ministry of Technology. Other Ministries are involved. But we are taking all the steps we can to ensure that British electronics equipment is put into planes which we are having to get from abroad, which is partly the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question.

Mr. Ridley: What steps is the right hon. Gentleman taking to make sure that the advanced development of aircraft


guidance systems and blind landing systems developed for the TSR2 will be continued now that it has been cancelled?

Mr. Cousins: That is a question which should be directly addressed to the Ministry of Aviation.

Mr. Marples: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the cancellation of the TSR2 was a blow to our electronics industry and that it will affect the electronics industries in certain development areas, such as Dalkeith in Scotland?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Parliamentary Questions

Mr. Ridley: asked the Minister of Technology what steps he takes in his Department to ensure that Parliamentary Questions put to him by hon. Members are answered on the day for which they are set down for answer; and if he is satisfied that the existing procedures are adequate.

Mr. Cousins: In general, I am satisfied with the procedures in my Department for dealing with Parliamentary Questions. In one particular case in which the hon. Member was concerned, I have already sent him an explanation and my apologies.

Mr. Ridley: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how it came to be that a Question for Written Answer on 4th March was not answered until 5th April? Can he say what purposive planning and what technological revolutions he is undertaking in his own Ministry to make sure that this does not happen again?

Mr. Cousins: I find this question rather strange, as a written explanation and personal apology have already been addressed to the hon. Member concerned.

New Technological Processes

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Technology what progress he is making in increasing the development of new technological processes in industry in Scotland.

Mr. Marsh: My right hon. Friend is concerned to promote the development and application of advanced technology in Scottish industry no less than in the rest of British industry and the plans on

which he is working will contribute to this end.

Mr. Bence: Would my hon. Friend consider establishing in Scotland—say in the new town of Cumbernauld, where there is plenty of scheduled building land—a department of the National Research Development Corporation so that it could, in co-operation with Scottish industry, develop some of these new techniques?

Mr. Marsh: That is something which I will willingly consider. The department intends to extend the work and facilities of the National Engineering Laboratory at East Kilbride. It has a great deal of activity under way at present in Scotland. However, we should need notice of Questions on any particular project.

Programming Techniques

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Technology what steps he is taking to co-operate with research associations to promote programming techniques in industry.

Mr. Marsh: The industrial Operations Unit in the Department is actively encouraging Research Associations to apply modern management aids for programming industrial operations by undertaking specific studies for them and by providing training courses. At least fifteen research associations now employ staff on work of this kind.

Mr. Bence: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, which reveals the tremendous dynamism which is being put into expanding and developing British industry. Will he give an assurance that the pace at which we are moving will be continued over the next four years?

Mr. Marsh: I am afraid that I could not give an assurance of that nature. One of the attractive features of Socialism is that it is a process of continuous improvement.

Regional Development

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Minister of Technology what progress is being made in the studies designed to stimulate the establishment in development districts of new science-based industries.

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Technology what contribution the National Research Development Corporation will make towards the Government's policy of stimulating regional development, particularly in the field of technologically advanced industry.

Mr. Cousins: It is one of the principal functions of the regional offices of my Department to advise on technological development in their regions. The National Research Development Corporation, which works in close touch with my regional offices, is already supporting several projects in under-employed regions. I have reminded the Corporation of the importance of keeping regional problems specially in mind. Clause 4 of the Development of Inventions Bill now before Parliament will enable the Government to consider sponsoring development projects which might contribute to regional growth but which do not meet the Corporation's normal criteria.

Mr. Hamilton: Does my right hon. Friend recognise that, in view of the callous neglect of the previous Administration of the development districts, there should be a sense of urgency in tackling this problem? Does he further recognise that in central West Fife, in particular, there is the imminent closure of a coal mine employing more than 1,100 men and that there is no possibility of redeploying those men in the existing coal mines? Will he undertake to direct the attention of the N.R.D.C. to that area with a view to establishing a publicly-owned industry there which is science-based?

Mr. Cousins: Because of the neglect in past years, we are having to take the urgent steps suggested.

Mr. Hamling: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask what has happened to Question No. 16?

Mr. Speaker: It was answered with Question No. 2. I did look at the hon. Member, but I did not realise that he was not aware of what had happened.

Sir G. Nicholson: Will the right hon. Gentleman make clear for the information of the House the degree to which the N.R.D.C. is obliged to consider wider political or semi-political questions? Is it not a fact that its main task is to

investigate projects from the purely scientific angle?

Mr. Cousins: Primarily from the research and development angle, yes.

Mr. Bessell: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is any programme in existence for basing industries of this sort in the South-West?

Mr. Cousins: Not without notice. But the regions are considering the need for basing industries in all regions.

Military Aircraft (Electronic Equipment)

Mr. Charles Morrison: asked the Minister of Technology what steps he has taken to ensure that the British electronic industry will have the opportunity to tender for electronic equipment to be used in military aircraft purchased from the United States of America.

Mr. Cousins: Responsibility for inviting tenders for aircraft equipment rests with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Aviation, in association with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who is responsible for determining the requirements of the Services. I am in touch with both my right hon. Friends on the subject raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Morrison: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what success he has met with in his discussions with his two right hon. Friends? Also, can he say whether he has managed to achieve anything on behalf of the British electronics industry?

Mr. Cousins: That is a series of questions which, in my opinion, should more properly be put down as separate questions. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am entitled to that opinion, I assume. The electronics industry has, through its association, discussed this project with me. It has made its views known. I have represented those views to the appropriate Ministries. Obviously we shall have regard to the points which it has made.

Mr. Fell: Does the Minister realise that the electronics industry is greatly worried by the fact that many Government contracts are being placed in the United States for equipment for which there is a British equivalent in price, delivery and performance? Will he get together with


his hon. and right hon. Friends to see whether a plan can be worked out for issuing a directive that British equipment shall be ordered when the price, delivery and performance are equivalent to those of American firms?

Mr. Cousins: All the points which the hon. Gentleman has raised were drawn to my attention by the Electronics Engineering Association. They have been represented to the appropriate Ministries and we shall keep them in mind in discussing the question of equipment in British aircraft. There is a very considerable problem of time delay, argued by the aviation industry, as against our own times.

Mr. Marples: As the right hon. Gentleman is in charge of and is really sponsoring the electronics industry, am I right in thinking that in answer to a supplementary question earlier he said that the British electronics industry would have the right to tender for electronics equipment supplied for American aircraft?

Mr. Cousins: The right hon. Gentleman is quite incorrect in assuming that that reply was given. But the British electronics industry is entitled to tender for equipment, and it does so continuously.

Machinery and Equipment (Classification)

Mr. Sheldon: asked the Minister of Technology what studies he has carried out in the classification of machinery and equipment so that distinctions can be made concerning the usefulness of investment in such items.

Mr. Marsh: The Department has already acquired a considerable fund of knowledge about machinery and equipment and the question of improving industrial statistics, including the question of classification, is under examination. Whether this information when available, could be used for the purpose my hon. Friend has in mind is, of course, a separate issue.

Mr. Sheldon: Would my hon. Friend agree that a broad classification is a

necessary prelude to differentiating between the usefulness of different kinds of investments? Would he consult the Chancellor of the Exchequer to see what financial incentives other than tax allowances might be usefully introduced?

Mr. Marsh: I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the point which he has in mind is highly contentious. The question of fiscal incentives is for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Engineers, Scientists and Technologists

Mr. Sheldon: asked the Minister of Technology what action he has taken to encourage the provision of more engineers, scientists and technologists.

Mr. Marsh: The Committee on Manpower Resources for Science and Technology, which reports jointly to the Secretary of State for Education and Science and my right hon. Friend, is actively concerned with this matter. In addition, my right hon. Friend has commissioned a special study of recruitment to the engineering profession.

Mr. Sheldon: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask him whether he agrees that one of the main problems in getting scientists, engineers and technologists is the slowness of informing the schools of what has been happening in these industries over the past few years? Therefore, some connection with the Department of Education and Science to get this information to the schools is a most desirable feature. Will my hon. Friend go into this matter again?

Mr. Marsh: We have done more than go into it. This is largely the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education and Science. He has set up an inter-departmental working party on this subject which is examining how to attract by publicity more able young people into technology. We are members of that working party with the Department of Education and Science.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Are the reports correct about the number of scientists and engineers who have applied for jobs in South Africa? If so, what steps is the


hon. Gentleman taking to retain their services in this country?

Mr. Marsh: The purpose of this Department is to ensure that there is a better future for scientists and technologists than there has been under previous Administrations.

Mr. Palmer: Would my hon. Friend agree that it would help tremendously if industry made a practice of placing more engineers and scientists on the boards of management?

Mr. Gower: Will the Minister take account of the fact that scientists and technologists are stimulated above all by the atmosphere in countries like the United States, where private enterprise is the prevailing system?

Mr. Marsh: The trouble with hon. Members opposite is that they—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]

Mr. Speaker: Let us do better than that. Mr. John Osborn.

D.S.I.R. Research Stations (Transfer)

Mr. J. H. Osborn: asked the Minister of Technology if he will publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT the sections of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which have now been transferred to his Department; where they are now located; what is the respective number of civil servants involved; and if the transfer is complete.

Mr. Marsh: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Osborn: When will the Parliamentary Secretary be in a position to state the names of the people involved? Will he confirm that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research no longer exists?

Mr. Marsh: As I have already said in answer to the Question, we are prepared to publish the whole position.

Mr. Osborn: Will the information that is published include the names of the principal officers?

Mr. Marsh: That is something that we will have to consider. If the hon. Member is not satisfied with what is pub-

lished, he can put down a Question and pursue the matter further.

Following is the information:

The following research stations of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research have been transferred to the Ministry of Technology:—

Station
Main Location
Staff (including industrial staff) in post on 1st April, 1965


Building Research Station.
Garston (near Watford).
670


Fire Research Station
Elstree
137


Forest Products Research Station.
Princes Risborough.
175


Hydraulics Research Station.
Wallingford
222


Laboratory of the Government Chemist.
London
383


National Engineering Laboratory.
East Kilbride
739


National Physical Laboratory (including the former National Chemical Laboratory).
Teddington
1,665


Torry Research Station.
Aberdeen
204


Warren Spring Laboratory.
Stevenage
394


Water Pollution Research Laboratory.
Stevenage
172


Total

4,761

In addition, the following staffs have been transferred:—

(a) 310 Headquarters staff located in London, responsible for the industrial functions of the Department, including servicing the stations transferred.

(b) Staffs at branch offices: Edinburgh 6; Cardiff 4; Newcastle 3.

The transfer is complete.

Medical Engineering

Mr. J. H. Osborn: asked the Minister of Technology how much work in medical engineering is being carried out by the research stations and research associations; how many people are involved in this work; and what is the approximate estimated cost in the current financial year.

Mr. Marsh: Six small projects are in hand in the Ministry's research stations. The total cost is £15,000 and the effort involved is equivalent to three staff full-time. In the research associations the figures are £6,000 and one member of staff full-time.

Mr. Osborn: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware of the importance of this matter? No doubt he has read the proceedings of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee in which the problems of cross-infection, air conditioning in operating theatres and biogenetics were discussed. Is this work being encouraged by the Department to bring engineers to the assistance of doctors?

Mr. Marsh: To take one specific point which the hon. Member has raised, the Heating and Ventilating Research Association is at present studying air conditioning in operating theatres. To give other examples, the National Engineering Laboratory is doing a study of abrasive wear test procedures suitable for dentifrice materials, Warren Spring Laboratory is carrying out a study on the design and siting of instruments and equipment in dental surgeries, and so on. A great deal of work is being done in exactly the direction which the hon. Member suggests.

Mr. Maxwell: Is my hon. Friend providing sufficient support for medical electronics and biological engineering, a field that is likely to yield considerable benefits to mankind and in which Great Britain today is leading, and does he not consider that the sums which he has mentioned are paltry in relation to the problem? Will he make a statement?

Mr. Marsh: I would need notice of the specific point, but in general the National Research Development Corporation is always prepared to look at problems of this kind.

Government Departments (Computers)

Mr. Marten: asked the Minister of Technology if the Technical Advisory Unit will make recommendations on the desired level of computer utilisation when considering applications from Government Departments.

Mr. Cousins: The Technical Support Unit of the Computer Advisory Service will make objective technical appraisals of applications for computers by Government Departments. My Department will also be ready to give any other general advice on computer proposals. The final decisions on the extent of use of computers must, how-

ever, rest with the individual user Departments in consultation as necessary with the Treasury.

Mr. Marten: Can the Minister confirm that computers in Government service are allowed to work only two shifts out of a possible three? What is the reason for this under-utilisation of a valuable investment?

Mr. Cousins: There is an agreement with the National Staff Side negotiating committee governing the time when these computers are used.

Mr. Tilney: Will the Unit look at semi-Government organisations controlled by the Treasury, such as the Trustee Savings Banks?

Mr. Cousins: The Unit will look at anything that it is asked to look at, provided there is an understanding that it is a Government unit.

Mr. Marples: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman two questions? First, does he agree that the effectiveness of a computer depends upon its being employed as far as possible for 24 hours a day, with the exception of a small time for maintenance, and that to under-employ computers is criminal if we are seeking to modernise the country? Secondly, is it obligatory that all Government Departments should seek the Minister's advice before ordering equipment, and are British computer firms given a chance to tender for Government orders?

Mr. Cousins: It is, of course, desirable that computers should be used to the maximum, but whether their use is required for 24 hours a day is a matter which is determined in the light of the experience of the Department which is using them. There are many computers in British industry where efficiency is the keynote which are not used 24 hours a day. In reply to the second question, yes, it is obligatory for Government Departments to seek advice from the Technical Advisory Unit.

Mr. Marples: May I press the Minister to say——

Mr. William Hamilton.: On a point of order. Is it not a fact, Mr. Speaker, that in view of the Report issued yesterday which deals with Parliamentary


Questions, this is a gross abuse of Question Time by the right hon. Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples)?

Mr. Speaker: No point of order arises. The calling of hon. Members to ask supplementary questions is solely a matter for the discretion of the Chair.

Mr. Heffer: On a point of order. Has it not been understood, Mr. Speaker, on the basis of the Report which has been issued, that it is not a question of stifling discussion but that all Front Bench speakers, from either side of the House, should take into consideration in asking supplementary questions the need to be brief and to intervene as little as possible?

Mr. Speaker: One of the most important things is that we should not have points of order which are not points of order. I have nothing to add to my reply already given.

Mr. Marples: May I ask the Minister, whether, in his opinion, it is better to use a computer for all the hours that it is serviceable than to close it down because of a whim on the part of the staff or the management?

Mr. Cousins: If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to put down Questions, I am fairly sure that we shall be prepared to answer them at any time. The closing down of the use of these computers to which I assume the right hon. Gentleman is referring is done not by a whim but by agreement between the two sides.

Greater London Council (Computers)

Mr. Peter Griffiths: asked the Minister of Technology if the Computer Advisory Unit has been approached by the Greater London Council in connection with their current requirement for additional computers.

Mr. Cousins: I have had some discussion with the leader of the Greater London Council about its current requirements of computers. The Council is consulting the Unit about its future requirements.

Mr. Griffiths: Does the Minister agree that since there is a fruitful field in complex units of local government, this is a

direction in which the Unit might well take the initiative?

Mr. Cousins: The Unit is prepared to do this at any time.

Teredo and Gribble

Mr. Driberg: asked the Minister of Technology what progress is being made in combating the depredations of the teredo and the gribble; and whether, among other factors tending to encourage these pests, those engaged in this research test regularly the temperature of estuary waters that may be warmed gradually by the discharge of hot effluents from nuclear power stations.

Mr. Cousins: Research to combat these pests has been undertaken for some years by the Timber Research and Development Association, which is grant-aided by my Ministry. Research so far has identified the more resistant types of timber and the best protective compositions.

Mr. Driberg: Will my right hon. Friend see that this matter is watched year after year, since clearly the development of these boring pests is a matter of very great importance to the fishing industry and to those engaged in sailing, and, of course, they thrive in warm water? Will my right hon. Friend therefore watch the situation?

Mr. Cousins: Certainly, I shall be prepared to do this. I am getting quite used to the activities of boring pests.

Mr. Hamling: Are these pests members of the Tory Party?

Mr. Cousins: They are, apparently, frequently found in warm water.

Sir R. Thompson: For greater accuracy, will the Minister tell us what a gribble is?

Mr. Cousins: In the light of the Question, I should have thought that that would have been understood. They are marine wood-boring pests.

North-East

Mr. Randall: asked the Minister of Technology what steps he has taken to encourage the electronics industry in the North-East as a contribution to further industrial development there.

Mr. Cousins: My Department's Regional Office is exploring with electronics firms in the North-East their facilities for undertaking work on defence contracts and on civil development contracts.

Mr. Randall: My right hon. Friend knows of my long interest in this matter. Will he take it from me that there is real urgency in this, and that if we are to link up the new industrial development that is taking place in the North-East the encouragement of electronics there is most important?

Mr. Cousins: We have already had discussions with the Ministry of Aviation and with our own regional office, and we intend to pursue this with the electronic firms.

Sea Water Desalination

Mr. Driberg: asked the Minister of Technology if, in view of the shortage of water in many parts of Great Britain, he will expedite research on the desalination of sea water; and if he will circulate in HANSARD a full statement on the progress of such research, on the various processes that have been tested and the results of the tests, on the information available as a result of research in other countries, and on the likely cost of any scheme that proves practicable.

Mr. Cousins: I recognise the importance of this subject and I have directed the Atomic Energy Authority, under Section 4 of the Science and Technology Act, to take responsibility for a substantial programme of research and development into desalination methods. With permission, I propose to circulate a fuller statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Driberg: Can my right hon. Friend say how quickly progress is likely to be made, since if there were really rapid progress in this research it could avert such unfortunate disputes as that between Manchester and the Lake District?

Mr. Cousins: This subject is receiving urgent attention, and I shall circulate the report.

Mr. Tilney: Will the right hon. Gentleman see what can be done to expedite the conservation of fresh water

now running to waste into the seas round our coasts?

Following is the Statement:

PARLIAMENTARY STATEMENT BY THE MINISTER OF TECHNOLOGY ON DESALINATION RESEARCH

After consultation with the Atomic Energy Authority, I have issued a direction under Section 4 of the Science and Technology Act 1965 requiring them to be solely responsible on behalf of the Government for research and development into methods of desalination of salt water for civil use. The Authority are accordingly embarking on a programme of work in this field the main emphasis of which will initially be on multistage flash distillation techniques and the associated plant development. Work on flash distillation techniques will be a joint effort between the Authority and industry. The Authority's programme will also include work on other techniques. The Authority will study the possibilities of using nuclear power reactors for the dual purpose of generating electricity and supplying steam to large desalination plants as an alternative to the use of fossil fuels as the source of heat for raising steam.

After consultation with the Minister of Land and Natural Resources, I have asked the Authority to assume responsibility for the Committee on Desalination Research, which formerly operated under the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. This Committee, in its new form, will advise the Atomic Energy Authority on research and development into methods of desalination. It will not be concerned with specific proposals for the production and use of desalted water in this country.

Under the Water Resources Act, 1963, the Water Resources Board have an interest in desalination as part of their statutory function to advise on ways and means of conserving, redistributing or otherwise augmenting water resources generally throughout England and Wales. The Board are now being invited to nominate a representative to the Advisory Committee.

The Water Research Association, which is supported by public water undertakings throughout the country and is already represented on the Advisory Committee, is at present engaged on an assessment, extending over three years, of the economic and technical feasibility of the application of desalination to British water supply. This study began in October 1964. An interim report should be available for publication later this year.

The machinery of the Advisory Committee will facilitate co-ordination of the activities of the Authority and of their commercial collaborators in the development of desalination techniques for exploitation both at home and in export markets; of the Water Resources Board, who are responsible for the augmentation of water resources generally; and of the statutory water undertakings who have the duty of securing the public water supply.

British industry have been mainly responsible for the methods of desalination now in commercial use and for the design and manufacture of most of the desalination plants in operation in the world today. The Government intend to do everything possible to maintain our leading position in this important field and to ensure that we take an appropriate share of what is likely to be a rapidly expanding export market.

Ruby Lasers

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Minister of Technology what progress has been made in research in Great Britain into the practical possibilities of light from ruby lasers.

Mr. Cousins: Encouraging progress is being made in the fields of surgery, high-speed photography, surveying, machining of refractory materials and micro-welding and micro-machining of miniature components.

Atomic Power (Thorium)

Mr. Woodburn: asked the Minister of Technology what investigation is being made into the economies to be achieved by the production of atomic power from incubated thorium; and whether any reactors are being built in Great Britain to test and exploit this process.

Mr. Cousins: The Atomic Energy Authority has made some study of this but has concluded that in the short term thorium has no economic prospects as a substitute for uranium.

Mr. Woodburn: In regard to both this Question and the previous one, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that both Germany and America claim to have made a break-through in both laser development and in the development of thorium? Is he aware that they are now experimenting, and hope and believe that incubated thorium will provide cheaper atomic energy than anything so far developed?

Mr. Cousins: I am aware of that, but the Atomic Energy Authority has its own views about the value of thorium at the moment, other than for cladding.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what his Department is doing about this question of light from ruby lasers, and is not this a very important matter for the future?

Mr. Cousins: Certainly it is.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Nationalised Industries

Mr. Palmer: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how he proposes to develop the system of financial objectives for the nationalised industries to assist national economic expansion.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Niall MacDermot): State industries all have an important rôle to play in developing and expanding the economy, particularly those in the energy and transport spheres now being studied. It is in this context that we shall wish to look at and, if need be, develop the system of financial objectives for these industries. But it is premature at this stage, when these inquiries are incomplete, to say precisely how this should be done.

Mr. Palmer: Now that we have a Government who believe in public ownership, would not my hon. and learned Friend agree that there is a case for reviewing some of the assumptions made in the previous Government's White Paper on this subject?

Mr. MacDermot: Yes, Sir. As my right hon. Friend has said, in general we accept the financial targets contained in the existing White Paper, but, for the reasons indicated by my hon. Friend, we are reviewing this matter and we will consider in what further ways we can develop the system of financial objectives.

Old-Age Pensioners (Tobacco Coupons)

Sir J. Lucas: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if, in view of the rise in the cost of tobacco, he will seek power to authorise the reintroduction of coupons for old-age pensioners to enable them to buy limited amounts of tobacco at a reduced price.

Mr. MacDermot: No, Sir.

Sir J. Lucas: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman realise that that will cause great disappointment amongst all the old-age pensioners, and amongst his personal admirers?

Mr. MacDermot: I think that the experience of the previous coupon


scheme showed that it worked unfairly as between different classes of pensioners and as between smokers and nonsmokers, and also led to serious abuse. I do not think there is a general feeling that it ought to be readopted.

Mr. William Clark: In view of that reply, will the hon. and learned Gentleman tell us why his party persistently opposed the abolition of the coupons?

Mr. MacDermot: The answer is that we wanted an increase in pensions, which was not granted. We have now made the most substantial increase in the pension that has ever been made, and this is a much more satisfactory way of assisting old-age pensioners.

Dr. Miller: Has my hon. and learned Friend's attention been drawn to the statement by the Chairman of the Medical Research Council at the Royal Society for Health Congress in which he indicates that the Government should do all in their power to discourage smoking, and if he feels that there is something in this question will he consider taxing cigarettes more heavily than other forms of tobacco?

Mr. MacDermot: I do not think that in determining fiscal policy it would be right to have regard to those considerations, but, of course, the tax which has been imposed will help, in so far as it has the effect of deterring people from smoking cigarettes.

UNITED STATES (PRIME MINISTER'S VISIT)

Mr. Blaker: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his recent visit to the United States of America.

Mr. Jackson: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the talks that he had with President Johnson during his recent visit to the United States of America.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Minister if he discussed with the President of the United States of America the desirability of establishing a World Food Bank; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Gower: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement about his recent visit to North America.

Mr. McNair-Wilson: asked the Prime Minister what discussions he had with President Johnson on his recent visit to the United States of America regarding the policy of the United States Government on the strengthening of sterling.

Mr. Heffer: asked the Prime Minister what was the outcome of his discussions with President Johnson on the subject of Vietnam during his recent visit to the United States.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): The main purpose of my recent visit to the United States of America was to address the Economic Club in New York. While I was in the United States, I was glad to have the opportunity to have talks with the Secretary-General of the United Nations and with President Johnson on a number of subjects of common interest.

Mr. Blaker: Is the Prime Minister aware that President Johnson has recently announced greatly increased American support for the Mekong River development project as a means of encouraging peace and economic development in South-East Asia? Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he discussed with President Johnson the possibility of Britain taking part in this important scheme, and, if so, can he give the House any details?

The Prime Minister: This proposal for a big development scheme in the Mekong Valley was included in the speech made by President Johnson in Baltimore just before my visit. I therefore had the opportunity of long discussions with him on this question. Britain has been concerned in some of the technical examination, and I have said that we intend to co-operate to the fullest extent of our powers in this development.

Mr. Jackson: I congratulate the Prime Minister on the great success of his visit, and I am sure that that is endorsed by all hon. Members on this side of the House. May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, despite certain remarks made in Washington, he will


continue to pursue an individual initiative with regard to the Far-Eastern crisis?
Secondly, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that this is a better approach than the slavish acquiescence of the Tory Opposition to the Washington line?

The Prime Minister: We discussed a number of initiatives, and had fruitful discussions, and I think that we have seen some of the results of those discussions. It never has been the policy of the Government to embark on slavish acquiescence in the views of the party opposite.

Mr. Frank Allaun: As the escalation of the war seems to be in the direction of bombing Hanoi, Peking, and industrial centres, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he told the President in advance that this country would dissociate itself from any such step?

The Prime Minister: There was never any discussion of the possibility of bombing Hanoi, Peking, or any other such place.

Mr. William Hamilton: In view of my right hon. Friend's long-known recognition of the danger of world poverty, may I ask whether he can give an undertaking that he will lose no opportunity of discussing this problem and the institution of a World Food Bank with all world leaders at every opportunity?

The Prime Minister: The question of the world food scheme is a matter for F.A.O., with which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development is concerned. When, a year or two ago, I reopened the proposal of some years ago for a World Food Board, it was in the context of the possibility of large agricultural surpluses as a result of high agricultural prices in the Common Market and elsewhere. I am sure the House would agree that if there is to be a development of surpluses through agricultural protection there is everything to be said for channelling those surpluses to hungry nations.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The right hon. Gentleman will remember that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling) put forward certain proposals for easing the problem of international liquidity. Was the right hon. Gentleman

able to take these any further in his talks with the President?

The Prime Minister: There have been a number of proposals for international liquidity. I think that when the Labour Party were on that side of the House we put forward some rather fuller proposals than those of the right hon. Member for Barnet (Mr. Maudling). Certainly this was discussed fully during my visit, not only with the President, but with the new Secretary to the Treasury, and our various views on this were compared. I know the disappointments that there have been in the past in this matter, but the prospects now, in relation to both the American and the French scene, are better for a discussion of international liquidity. In Washington I said that we will make less progress if we all put forward proposals with names to them, or with national names. It is far better for something to emerge from international discussions without anyone taking pride in the authorship of any particular scheme.

Mr. Gower: Can the Prime Minister explain the remarks that he made during his visit to North America, and particularly New York, when he explained the measures taken by the Government to promote a new sense of drive and urgency, and technological advance and invention? Does he appreciate that whatever the Economic Club of New York thought of it, to many people in this country it will seem like an Alice-in-Wonderland description of legislation by this Government?

The Prime Minister: I am sure that the hon. Member will realise that the Economic Club of New York, consisting of Wall St. bankers and industrialists, is a rather tougher and less impressionable audience, even than some of those that the hon. Member may address from time to time. So far as that audience was concerned, so far as a large part of British industry is concerned, and so far as everyone except those who have political advantage to seek in denying what we are doing is concerned, it is accepted.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Did the Prime Minister explain to the Economic Club or to anyone else over there how he was going to "knock hell" out of the American aircraft industry?

The Prime Minister: What I explained to them—I did not go out of my way


to draw attention to the last 13 years—was that when we have got some sense of urgency in the innovations in our civil industry, and when we have deployed some of our wasted resources from defence white elephants into civil electronics and engineering, we will knock hell out of them.

Mr. Maudling: Did not the Prime Minister call attention, quite rightly, to the enormous reserves supporting sterling that have been amassed in the last 13 years?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the figures. The increase over the past 13 years, as a proportion of the total, is very small. The right hon. Gentleman can have the figures if he wants them.

COMMONWEALTH ORDER OF MERIT

Mr. Tilney: asked the Prime Minister whether he will suggest the introduction of a Commonwealth Order of Merit which could be given on the advice of Presidents and Governors General to any of their nationals who had shown outstanding service for the Commonwealth.

The Prime Minister: Citizens of Commonwealth countries, other than the United Kingdom, are of course eligible for the existing Order of Merit. Other Commonwealth countries, where The Queen is not Head of State, have their own systems of honours, and I think there would be difficulties in proposing a Commonwealth-wide system as the hon. Member suggests.

Mr. Tilney: Despite the present difficulties between two Commonwealth countries, since hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to stimulate the Commonwealth concept, and since the recognition of endeavour is very acceptable to the human race, can the Prime Minister say that should another Commonwealth country propose such an order the Government of the United Kingdom would not oppose it?

The Prime Minister: I am not sure whether the hon. Member has in mind the existing Order of Merit as we know it or some extension of it. As he will realise, these awards are made on the

initiative of Her Majesty as a mark of honour and not on recommendation. If the hon. Gentleman is raising the question of some new Commonwealth Order we shall be prepared to give consideration to any suggestion made by any Commonwealth Head of Government, although a large number of Commonwealth citizens are already included in the Birthday and New Year's Honours Lists every year.

GOVERNMENT STORES (ORDERING AND DISPOSAL)

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Prime Minister whether he will appoint a Minister to conduct an interdepartmental investigation into the system of ordering stores and supplies and their subsequent disposal as surplus.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, not at present.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that there has been and still is considerable public disquiet about this matter? If he receives any report in the future from any authorities, will he give it serious consideration and follow it up with action?

The Prime Minister: I share the disquiet expressed. There has been a considerable improvement recently in stockholding and the transferring of surpluses, as a result of the installation of computers, but there are still anxieties about the methods of their disposal as well as of their ordering. As I have said, the Ministers are looking into this. If we find that there is a case for any kind of Ministerial or general inquiry we shall not hesitate to institute it.

Mr. Marten: Is not this something that should come out of an efficient Estimates Committee? If Estimates Committees were appointed for a much longer time we should get more out of them of this nature.

The Prime Minister: It is not for me to suggest the appropriate programme for an Estimates Committee, or to comment in any way on its work. In the past the Estimates Committee has produced valuable reports on this subject, and the Public Accounts Committee, which has


looked at the matter after the event, has produced some devastating reports, as the House knows.

PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL (TALKS)

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on his talks with the Prime Minister of Israel.

The Prime Minister: Mr. Eshkol's visit to London provided my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and myself with a welcome opportunity to discuss with him, in accordance with the friendly relations between our two countries, a wide range of subjects of mutual interest and concern, especially Anglo-Israel relations and the situation in the Middle East.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: In view of the fact that the situation in the Middle East appears to be becoming daily more explosive as a result of the water problem, can the Prime Minister assure the House that the Government are conscious of this deterioration in the situation and tell the House what steps they have in mind to combat it?

The Prime Minister: We discussed the water question pretty thoroughly with Mr. Eshkol when he was over here, and there are continuing discussions all the time between Her Majesty's representatives abroad and some of the other countries concerned. I am sure that the House will agree that, however strongly any of the countries concerned feel about possible diversions—and there are diversions going on in a number of directions—this matter must be settled by agreement. If there is an act which may be regarded as provocative, it should be taken to the United Nations and not made the subject of an attempt at settlement by armed conflict, or anything of that nature.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: Has the Prime Minister any new ideas how to solve the Arab refugee problem, and can he say whether this was discussed at all with Mr. Eshkol? Those of us who were here at the time have it on our consciences.

The Prime Minister: I believe that there was some discussion of this problem between my right hon. Friend the

Foreign Secretary and Mr. Eshkol, although in my own discussions with him we concentrated on other matters. On this occasion I was not discussing the refugee problem, which I have discussed in a previous capacity with Israeli Government members.

Mr. Maxwell: Can my right hon. Friend say what possible initiative Her Majesty's Government is taking to support President Bourguiba's announcement of a possible settlement of the Israeli-Arab dispute, which has been smouldering for so long?

The Prime Minister: This is a rather new initiative taken by President Bourguiba. We shall wish to consider what he has suggested, although on a first reading of the statement I can see some difficulties about his proposal.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing: Reverting to the point about the Jordan waters, will the Prime Minister consider asking the United Nations to strengthen its representation in this area, so that the true facts are known and can be observed independently on the spot? There is a great difference of opinion as to just what is going on, particularly in the Arab countries, with regard to the diversion of the Jordan waters.

The Prime Minister: I am not sure that there is a dispute about what is going on on the water side. The United Nations representation there is mainly in terms of supervision and military troops. As for the water situation, there is an acute need for water in the whole area by all countries and this lends great emphasis to the need to devise methods for making fresh water out of salt water, about which a great deal of experimentation is going on at the southern end of Israel. Let us hope that that can be speeded up sufficiently to avoid a shortage of water either in Israel or in the Arab countries while the present diversions are going on.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Lubbock.

Mr. Fisher: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not think it is quite half-past three.

Mr. Speaker: I bona fide thought it was, but I cannot go back on my bad judgment.

Mr. Fell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It was quite clear to everybody—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] It was quite clear to everybody in the House that it was not quite half-past three. Surely you, Sir, in your conduct of the House, nave every right to change your mind when you find that it is not quite half-past three, or when it is drawn to your attention.

Mr. Speaker: Having already called the next item of business, I did not think that I ought to do so. I regret my misjudgment of the clock. It is not possible to be infallible in all matters at all times.

Mr. Fisher: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not wish to make much of a point of this, but I do not recall that you had, in fact, announced the next business.

Mr. Speaker: I thought that I had called the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] All right, I made a bad excuse for refusing to revise my estimate of time, but I still do not revise it. I am sorry. A bona fide effort to tell the clock was badly made.

Sir Knox Cunningham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is not it usual for you to receive guidance as to the time from the Clerk at the Table, and would not you take that opportunity on this occasion and future occasions?

Mr. Speaker: I never, at half-past three, receive guidance as to the time from any Clerk at the Table.

Oral Answers to Questions — BILL PRESENTED

DECIMAL CURRENCY

Bill to amend the law regarding currency and coinage and to provide for the introduction of decimal currency, presented by Mr. Eric Lubbock; supported by Mr. Peter Bessell; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday 7th May and to be printed. [Bill 134.]

SUEZ OPERATIONS (SPECIAL COMMISSION)

3.31 p.m.

Mr. Michael Foot: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to constitute a special commission to inquire into the origin, inception and conduct of the operation by British forces directed at Suez and elsewhere in Egypt in the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six.
I am sure that the House will understand from what I have said that my proposal is simple, uncontroversial, straightforward, well-nigh self-explanatory and highly topical. It is topical in two sense, first, because next year is 1966 and will be the tenth anniversary of the Suez expedition and it is quite certain that many comments will be made in many quarters ten years after the events of 1956. Whatever view may be taken of those events, I think that it would be highly desirable that the British Government, and, in particular, those who participated in this event, should be able to state their views, which they have hitherto been denied, or at least have denied themselves, the opportunity to do. So I think that in that sense it is topical.
It is also topical in another sense, that several books have been written and recently published on this subject. Hon. Members may think that there is nothing novel about that. A whole series of books have been written on this matter. I once wrote a book myself on this subject, in association with Mr. Mervyn Jones, and the House will not be surprised to hear that all the allegations I made on that occasion have been fully upheld by subsequent scholarship. Indeed, looking back on what I said, like Robert Clive, I marvel at my moderation.
However, this is topical in the sense not merely that another book has been written, but that the latest book which has been written on the subject carries the matter very much further. It is not a question of the author of the book relying on his own evidence. What he has presented in this book—it is by Mr. Terence Robertson, and is entitled "Crisis"—is the evidence given by several of the foreign participants in this event, headed by the present Prime Minister of Canada, Mr. Lester Pearson, who, at that time, was Foreign Minister,


or Minister for External Affairs, of Canada, and by M. Pineau, who was at that time, in 1956, the Foreign Minister of France. There are a number of other Ministers, Israeli and French Ministers and Ministers from Commonwealth countries, who have contributed to this book in statements published under their names and no repudiation of these statements has been made during the past three months.
Perhaps I could explain best and more simply the exact nature of what this book says by quoting from one of the reviews, which states:
The principal point of obscurity over the whole Suez transaction has been the extent of British knowledge of, and involvement with. Franco-Israeli plans for the synchronisation of Franco-British with Israeli attacks on Egypt. Here, Mr. Robertson is detailed, specific and convincing. Relying obviously, on accounts given to him by the French and Israeli Ministers concerned, he states categorically that on October 23rd, 1956, a secret draft agreement was concluded at Sevres, just outside Paris, between Mr. Ben-Gurion, M. Mollet, M. Pineau and Mr. Selwyn Lloyd.
M. Pineau goes on in the book—these are quotations not merely from the book, but from the Foreign Minister of France at that time—to discuss the nature of the agreement made between the British Government representative, among others, and M. Pineau. He says:
I recall very well this clause that we should appear to be defending the canal against both sides … it struck me then, and I do not hide it, that it was a little hypocritical, and I said so. But Ben-Gurion thought the need for British bombing of Egyptian airfields so important that he accepted it; and the British would not participate without this ruse or something like it. So we, Mollet and I, had to agree.
He says, a little later, that they sent a copy of this agreement to London and that according to his allegation, it was accepted by Sir Anthony Eden, who was Prime Minister at the time.
M. Pineau concludes:
When we received Eden's approval of the text it was incorporated into a formal document signed that afternoon by Patrick Dean for Britain, Ben-Gurion for Israel, and myself for France. I believe three copies were made, one for each government, and we decided that the agreement should never be published.
So the allegation made by M. Pineau is that there was an agreement entered into by the representative of the British Government to conceal the facts from the

British Parliament, the world at large, our allies and posterity.
Of course, there are some hon. Gentlemen or right hon. Gentlemen in this House who are particularly associated with this matter. There is the Leader of the Opposition, who was Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations at that time, and who is particularly referred to in this book by Mr. Lester Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada. I notified the Leader of the Opposition that I proposed to refer to him in this discussion. The right hon. Gentleman was present a few minutes ago, but he has now left the Chamber.
Other ex-Ministers are involved. There is the right hon. Member for Bexley (Mr. Heath), who was Chief Patronage Secretary at that time, and, in particular, there is the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd), who was more directly associated than anyone else. I must say that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has shown better manners than the rest of his party. I informed him that I intended to refer to him this afternoon and he sent me a very courteous note saying that he was sorry, but he could not be present for purely personal reasons. I accept that from him. I do not know whether they apply to all the other ex-Ministers who have left the Chamber.
Here is a direct charge of collusion. That is the charge made by M. Pineau against former members of the British Government. The meaning of the word "collusion", according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is:
A secret agreement or understanding for purposes of trickery or fraud; underhand scheming or working with another; deceit, fraud, trickery.

Mr. Speaker: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. He had some doubt when I ruled him out of order the other day. This definition makes it very awkward for him now. I must remind him that if I think fit, he is entitled, under this Standing Order, to make a brief statement explanatory of his Bill.

Mr. Foot: I do not think that I have said anything out of order at all. I was quoting to the House—as I would have thought I was entitled to do—the statements made by a former French Foreign


Minister as to what happened in 1956, and my proposed Bill refers directly to the events of 1956. We now have fresh evidence, given by the French Foreign Minister.
What I am saying—and I do not see how anybody can dispute this—is that the allegation by the French Foreign Minister amounts to an allegation of collusion against the right hon. Gentlemen whom I have named. What I am saying is that the proposal in my Bill is that this allegation should be investigated. It should be investigated by the only body in this country which is properly equipped to investigate it, and that is the House of Commons.
There is a long precedent in the country that when events of this nature took place—whether it was the expedition to Walcheren, or the defeat at Saratoga, or more recently the events at Gallipoli—

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman, with respect, has not followed. To make an accusation of dishonesty against another hon. Member, right hon. Member, former Minister or other is something which requires a substantive Motion. When he begins, when explaining the meaning of "collusion", to say that, in the mouth of another, there was an allegation of what amounted to fraud, he then, as he well knows, cannot, by putting the allegation in the mouth of some other person, make it here except by substantive Motion. That is the point.

Mr. Foot: I would need to look to many precedents which I would have thought would have covered this point. What I must content myself with saying is that charges of the most serious character have been made against a former Administration. They have been made not by people who have no responsibility for these matters, but by the former representatives of a foreign Government. One of the main reasons that I wish to have my Bill accepted by the House is that these allegations should be investigated by a body set up by the House of Commons.
I am asking that this body should follow precisely the precedents which have

been accepted by the House on previous occasions. That is, when there have been military expeditions which have ended in disaster, or military expeditions which have been thought by some not to have been required to start, the decision has been made by the House of Commons to set up a special commission to examine the matter. That is what my Bill proposes, to set up this Commission in exactly the same terms which were accepted by a former Government when special commission was established to inquire into the Gallipoli disaster. This demand for an investigation to be set up by the House of Commons is in absolute accordance with precedent. Indeed, the refusal of the former Government to set it up was, in my opinion and in the opinion of many hon. Members—I hope the majority—a grievous departure from previous high standards in the House.
Because of that, I believe that we should now have an inquiry to investigate this matter. It is the one way in which such serious allegations as this can be disposed of. On previous occasions when a similar Motion has been moved, the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have refused to accept it. I hope that they will accept it on this occasion, because in their absence I give them the chance to clear their names.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Michael Foot, Mr. Sydney Silverman, and Mr. Emrys Hughes.

SUEZ OPERATIONS (SPECIAL COMMISSION)

Bill to constitute a special commission to inquire into the origin, inception and conduct of the operation by British forces directed at Suez and elsewhere in Egypt in the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday 28th May and to be printed.[Bill 133.]

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR THE ARTS

3.46 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop: I beg to move,
That this House congratulates Her Majesty's Government on their statement, A Policy for the Arts, and in particular would welcome encouragement being given to local authorities to co-ordinate more effectively their programmes for the support of the arts on a regional basis.
I move this Motion with particular pleasure because it is not often in the House that we have the opportunity of discussing, more than very briefly, a matter of this sort, although many of us accept the point that the future of the arts is a matter of real importance to our whole standard of living. I move this Motion of congratulation on the White Paper which was presented to the House a short time ago all the more willingly because I feel that at this time there could have been many excuses adduced as to why it might be difficult to make suggestions for the development and support for the arts than previous Administrations have adduced from time to time.
Therefore, I welcome the Government's White Paper. I welcome it as proof that this Administration regards the support of the arts as a vital element of our whole standard of living, and that part of the reason for our economic drive in our great attempt to improve our economic situation is partly in order that people should have the wider opportunity of self-expression and of taking part in the whole range of activities in the arts which, so often in the past, has been denied them. So far from the arts being regarded as some sort of fringe benefit which one throws in if there happens to be some kind of financial surplus, this is something which is understood today to be an essential part of our standard of living.
It is true that this whole question of opportunity for enjoyment of the arts is taking on a new character today, because, as many people have pointed out, we are moving into a period when opportunities for leisure and its enjoyment are becoming very much more widespread than they have ever been in the past. This brings great advan-

tages, and, if one likes, some dangers with it. One could say that there are the dangers that increased leisure may be purely exploited by commercial elements and concerned purely with a mass audience, and that, so far from widening the range of opportunities of participation and expression, we might find it not so much widened but narrowed if some influences were to have their full head.
It is not that I would wish in any way to deny the right of commercial ventures to play their full part in the arts, but rather that one should recognise that if one relies on these particular elements to develop alone one is not likely to give the kind of range of opportunity which, I think, most of us want to see. It is obvious, considering the cost of providing professional entertainment—particularly in the fine arts—that a subsidy of one form or another is absolutely vital.
It is nonsense to imagine that this situation has ever been very different. All that has changed is the character of the people providing the subsidy. Whereas, in the past, a great deal of financial provision came from private sources, today more and more call is being made on the public sector for support. While there is no reason to imagine that there is anything new in this financial aspect, because of the danger about which I spoke we must do all we can to see that the public sector plays its full part in ensuring that this and future generations are not denied the opportunities they should have.
When the Local Government Act, 1948, was introduced, 17 years ago, by the late Aneurin Bevan, local authorities were empowered for the first time to spend from their rate funds on the development of entertainment and the arts. It was hoped at that time that local authorities would take great advantage of those powers, but, unfortunately, that has not occurred. Very modest use indeed has been made of the provisions of that Act. While some local authorities have used them, many have not. It is a pity that we have had to wait all this time—from the passing of that Act until today—to have a new announcement of intent from the Government and an appreciation by them of the importance of this matter.
Most hon. Members will welcome not only the White Paper presented by my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Jennie Lee), but also her appointment. It was, in our view, a most suitable appointment and we are pleased that it has been arranged for her to play a special part and accept responsibility for the development of the arts. I say that in the widest sense in relation to her position in the Department of Education and Science. I regard my hon. Friend as a link between the Government and the arts.
It should be remembered that in their education policy the Government have recognised the importance of providing education for the whole population and not for an exclusive group, clique, or section. It is important that the artistic needs of the whole community are catered for and not just the needs of an isolated section of it.
If some hon. Members opposite would cease their chattering we might make rather better progress, for I am sure that other hon. Members wish to express their views.

Mr. Anthony Fell: Is it not rather stretching things a bit to bring partisanship into art?

Mr. Blenkinsop: It depends on what one regards as partisanship. I am expressing a point of view which is widely held. If the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members disagree with it, they are entitled to do so and to express their own views. I was getting rather worried about the hon. Gentleman's verbal diarrhoea.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley: The hon. Gentleman said that nothing had been done by the Government—that no Government statement had been made—since the passage of the 1948 Act. Is he not aware of the many pamphlets, White Papers and declarations of policy which have been published and the debates which have taken place since 1948, as well as the whole feeling that has been developed towards the arts? Is he not being rather too partisan?

Mr. Blenkinsop: I said that we had had to wait all this time for a general statement of policy about the whole of the arts. I am only too well aware of the propositions that have been made in

the past, including those concerning the National Theatre and such enterprises as the Festival Hall, although such propositions have been sneered at in certain quarters.
I appreciate that those and other steps were taken by former Administrations and by the London County Council, now the Greater London Council. Indeed, such propositions covered the Arts Council itself and made arrangements for the necessary financial provisions. I recognise the activities of former Administrations, but I do not think that it can be denied that we have now had the first general statement of policy covering the Government's attitude towards the arts as a whole since the introduction of the 1948 Act.
I particularly stress the importance of our not thinking about the artistic needs of only a small and limited section of the community. The Government are thinking in terms of the community as a whole. If that is partisanship, I am being partisan. This activity on the part of the Government is clearly in line with the policy they are following in education generally. It is logical that there should be a link between the Government and education and the arts. It is equally logical that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary should have special responsibility for the arts.
I also stress the importance of our realising that since there are wider leisure opportunities for the community to take an interest in the arts, we should not leave the arts purely for commercial exploitation. Flowing naturally from this is something which has received vigorous and effective comment in the Press recently. It is the whole question of the use and display of the arts in their widest sense. There was, for example, a vigorous and interesting article in the Observer last Sunday in which Ian Nairn commented on the situation in all too many of our museums and art galleries. There has been a considerable investigation into this matter and we must pay credit to the museums and art galleries which have made, or have attempted to make, real advances with the small funds at their disposal.
However, we are not concerned solely with museums and art galleries. Professor Hugh Hunt said the other day that we should not be surprised if the number of young people showing an interest in the


live theatre today is not as great as we might wish if we are content with the conditions which prevail in many theatres and centres which provide for the arts. I welcome the new developments which have been taking place, but it has always seemed strange to me that we have in the past looked upon many of our centres of entertainment—concert halls, theatres, and so on—in a rather puritanical way. We have tended to think of these centres as providing merely for the events which take place. We have not thought sufficiently about the provision of other facilities, for example, to enable people to meet and discuss the arts in these centres before or after the concert, play or whatever it might be has taken place.
For these reasons, a new view towards the arts on the part of the Government is essential and the terms of the White Paper indicate that such a view is now being taken. We are beginning to realise that the community as a whole should be able to take advantage of the entertainment provided by the arts and the live theatre.
What are the major needs? First, we must remedy the present lack of adequate information. Very little research worthy of the name has been done, although I realise that some new investigations are now taking place. It is extraordinary, for example, how little we know about the make-up of audiences, whether for the theatre or for concerts and about the composition of the attendance at exhibitions at art galleries and in other centres.
We also know very little about how many of those trained professionally as artistes are able to pursue their interests and get work in their own sphere. I recognise that the B.B.C. has shown some initiative in this respect, and that it hopes, with others, to set on foot some inquiries, but it is rather deplorable that we should have had to wait for so long for such investigations to be undertaken.
I hope that among other immediate needs my hon. Friend will take a special interest in training opportunities for living artistes. A good deal is already being done there, although it may be argued that more still needs doing. A good deal of this work is being done in the visual arts and music but very much less for the drama. Practically nothing is

being done for the film—that is being omitted almost altogether. We need at least one effective training school for film techniques. That might well be closely linked with the visual arts and other techniques, and it also has obvious links with television requirements. There are great opportunities for training developments in connection with the Youth Theatre. Experiments have shown the very exciting possibilities that exist, and it is unfortunate that we have not been able to give as much support in this direction as should have been given.
Professional employment is very important. There is no point in training facilities if we are not clear about what opportunities there will be for those who have had training to employ their skills. In this connection, we can look to an enormous range of potential employers to find out whether sufficient encouragement is being given. Among the most obvious are the television authorities—B.B.C. and I.T.A. There is also sound radio. Again, a certain amount is being done here, but it saddens me to see everywhere so much studio space not used to give professional theatre and music groups an opportunity of performing. I know that this cannot be a blanket condemnation, but I also know how much this lack of proper opportunity affects the possibility of recruiting new professional groups in the provinces, who otherwise, naturally enough, look to London as the only source of potential employment.
I welcome the new work that the B.B.C. is doing with its Third Programme, and its recruitment of and assistance in training young musicians. Local authorities, too, have a very much bigger part to play than they have played up to date. I do not think here purely in terms of direct employment of artistes—although much can be done there—but of indirect support. The 1948 Act enabled local authorities to spend up to the product of a 6d. rate in support, as the Act declared, of entertainment, and there was specific reference to music and the theatre, but it is doubtful whether more than, perhaps, the product of a ¾d. rate is spent. There are exceptions, and I pay tribute to some local authorities who spend a great deal more.
The Act also allows local authorities to spend larger sums if revenue is produced. There are authorities, such as the Bournemouth Corporation, which make a profit by running entertainment and use some of the surplus to offer subsidies to orchestras——

Mr. Robert Cooke: The hon. Gentleman seeks to indicate that the present Government's policy will in some way make these backward authorities spend more. Perhaps he can elaborate that point, and show how the present Government's policy will make any difference to authorities which have hitherto determined not to spend the money.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will possess his soul in patience. I intend to show ways in which the present Administration will be able to encourage local authorities to do mare than they are already doing. I was trying to be fair to local authorities by saying that not only can they spend up to a 6d. rate, but that some can and do make use of funds they acquire by running very profitable forms of entertainment. It is highly desirable that they should do so, and more are following their example.
Again, it should be naturally assumed by local authorities and the central Government that major redevelopments in cities and urban areas, in new housing schemes, in larger school buildings—or hospital buildings, for that matter—should include provision for something of beauty. The living artiste should be expected to make a proper contribution. It should be assumed as natural that the artiste has a place in the whole developing life of the new communities. It has all too often been true in the past that such provision has been struck out of estimates by Governments, frankly, of different colours. I should like to see a Government who asked questions if provision was not made for some contribution by living artistes in the form of sculpture, painting, or other ways. At the moment, so much of what goes into our new construction gets in by a side wind. Perhaps a well-intentioned architect manages to make some kind of provision from the sums of money available to him, but it is not done by direct, open provision.
I welcome the statement of my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General that his Department intends to purchase original works of living artists for display in some post offices, and elsewhere. I wish that could become very much more general, and one would also welcome it in industry. In some of the larger new building schemes industry does give opportunity to new artists, but I should like to see that practice become much more general, and almost automatic.
Equally, this activity should be extended to the trade unions, Co-operative societies, and the rest. There is no reason why they should not be expected, with everyone else, to make some contribution. I am glad that the T.U.C. has for some time set aside small funds for the purchase of works of art by young artists, and I would be delighted if it became the common thing for such works to be shown in trade union offices, replacing some of the exhibitions that may appear there at present.
I should regard this as a general feature which should be a normal thing in our way of life. We might have far more exhibitions of art in central new towns as they develop. Equally and naturally, the universities would be expected to play a big part, particularly with new ideas and experiments. There will always be the opportunity for amateur societies, music societies and others, to encourage, as they have in the past, professional artistes to play in concerts and other performances.
Another matter with which I hope the Minister will be concerned is the traditional field of the work of the Arts Council in attempting to maintain the highest possible standards in the arts. The Arts Council can be complimented on the work it has done with very restricted resources. I appreciate this very much. I, and I am sure many others, have from time to time criticised and attacked the Arts Council and I shall no doubt continue to do so. I see the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) opposite. She has played a major part in criticism of the Arts Council on occasions. Many of the criticisms, however, have been due to the lack of resources of the Arts Council and to some extent, perhaps, due to its set-up.
We are glad to know that more funds are now being made available to the Arts


Council, not so much as we should like, but, nevertheless, they do provide support. Above all, this provides a modest sum for capital expenditure on purposes which have always been ruled out in the past. However much the Arts Council would like to have made provision, that was quite impossible on the very modest sums made available. I hope that the Arts Council will not feel so restricted as it has been in the past about making contributions towards projects run by local authorities. It is perhaps understandable that the Council has not been able to do so much, but today there are some exciting projects for which local authorities have accepted responsibility. They are entitled to support in the same way as for other projects.
Some of the proposals put forward by the Arts Council some years ago in its statement on housing the arts have gone forward, but many of them have not. Provision of the highest standard has not yet been made available in perhaps 12 major regional centres. I very much hope that we shall now be able to provide this. I am also encouraged by the new appointment of the Chairman of the Arts Council which was announced not long ago. I hope that this will be a sign of new energy, drive and eagerness to widen the scope of responsibility and the work of the Arts Council.
I hope that my hon. Friend will do what she can, as I am sure she is eager to do, to encourage the widest possible range of interest and participation more widely than the Arts Council has been able to take previously in both amateur and professional fields. Amateurs as a whole do not expect, and as a general rule do not require, very much in the way of financial assistance. Their main need is adequate facilities in the way of buildings, and so on. I should not think that their demand is likely to be very large, but, clearly, there is a need to ensure throughout the country opportunities on a relatively modest basis for small art centres, even in quite small communities. These could be available for both professional and amateur work and could also provide for experiment in some of the fun and gaiety that my hon. Friend has spoken about.
If this is to develop there is an urgent need for regional organisation. As hon.

Members know, I speak with some experience as, with the help of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Ted Fletcher), I had some experience in the organisation of support for the arts in the north-east of England. The North-Eastern Association for the Arts has won a great deal of support throughout the area from a great variety of critics of varying political background. In the North-East, feeling that we were to some extent deprived of opportunity for effective participation in the arts and also of seeing something of the best in the whole range of the arts, it was thought desirable to establish an organisation combining all the local authorities in the area, representatives from industry, from the universities and the trade unions, the B.B.C. and I.T.V.
They should, first, find what the major needs were and get at some of the facts and then to let the people know more about what was going on. It is extraordinary what little experience people have and how little one knows of what is happening in an area next door. There is an important job to be done in the regions to get much more publicity for the major events taking place there. That is something of great importance.
We need a body which will be able to encourage local authorities and industry and all the component parts of life in the region to play a fuller part in all this work, encouraged by modest financial support to bring people together to discuss ideas for development. In all these ways a great deal can be done, as we have been able to show in the North-East. That has not been due so much to the amount of money we have been able to raise, although that has been most useful. We have been able to raise about £100,000 a year which, considering the size of the area, is relatively chicken feed for major work, but, nevertheless, is quite useful in encouraging projects which otherwise might not have got off the ground. These projects have been in both the professional and to some extent the amateur field.
We can encourage local authorities by regional bodies such as this. They would not supplant the local authorities, but would encourage them to experiment and to do work which perhaps they had not thought of doing, indeed to develop a


kind of competition. A local authority may have been a little nervous of taking part in such a project, but if there is the attraction of a little financial support from the region and other bodies and we can organise groups in the surrounding region with the certainty of backing for a project it should succeed.
Help can be given in organising transport subsidies to bring people in from outlying places who otherwise would not have much chance of seeing the best in the whole range of the arts. A regional body such as this would not be so much concerned with purely local amateur work which does not intend to attract a large audience, but rather to encourage more ambitious work, probably by bringing in much more professional bodies.
The North-Eastern Association has 70 local authorities linked with it, which is by far and away the bulk of all local authorities in the area. Sixty firms are linked with it. So far, the contribution from industry is not very large, but we hope that it will grow. There are two universities, the B.B.C. and the I.T.V., and a number of trade unions are making very modest—alas—contributions. It has quite a large number of local arts associations and societies, which are not being supplanted but are being encouraged.
Such a layout is sufficiently important for us to look to its development over the country as a whole. I do not mean that we should lay down any absolute pattern, but that this method of trying to link local authorities with industry and with trade unions on as wide a basis as possible is valid for the country as a whole. I should like to see it applied covering the regions which have now been adopted for planning purposes. I would like to see all this work co-ordinated with planning operations in the new regions.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to take the initiative in calling conferences of those concerned, again something after the pattern of our North-Eastern Association. I do not mean for a moment that it should be strictly on the same basis. Conditions vary from region to region. I hope that she will be willing to take the initiative in getting something of this kind going.
I also hope that my hon. Friend will review the position of the Arts Council.

It has done an admirable job on very limited resources. We are very grateful to the Council for all that it has done. The time has come to examine its position to see whether some changes may not be needed. For example, I think that the Council is rather ingrown. It could be to its advantage if representatives from the regions were appointed to the Council. Now that the Council is likely to be asked to play a large part in advising on major new construction schemes for theatres and other large projects, it needs to strengthen its specialist and advisory teams.

Mr. John Cordle: Paragraph 67 of the White Paper draws attention to the crafts. Would the hon. Gentleman tell us his views on the crafts? What is his view of the suggestion that they should have direct liaison with the Arts Council?

Mr. Blenkinsop: That is a valid point, but I myself do not want to develop it. I hope that other hon. Members will follow up that point. I myself do not feel so competent to deal with it. I have already spoken for far too long and I want to ensure that other hon. Members have full opportunity of taking part in the debate.
I hope that the Arts Council will not feel itself restricted to making contributions to local authorities whose schemes seem to the Council to be of real value. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider the possibility of support for some major experimental schemes which might be rather outside the normal vista of the Arts Council. It may be more suitable for my hon. Friend to accept some responsibility for them herself.
I am thinking of the experimental work of Arnold Wesker and others at Centre 42 and of Joan Littlewood and her "Palace of Fun". I do not think that these things should be excluded, although it may be thought that these are not within the normal terms of reference of the Arts Council. However, if we want to instil a new interest in the arts in a much wider range of the population these are exciting and interesting projects which must be considered.
I hope that my hon. Friend will consider that she has sufficient responsibility in her appointment. It has been suggested that the appointment of a senior


Minister for Arts and Culture, or some other high-sounding name, completely in the void and not attached to a Ministry, might have been approved of. I do not think that that would have been wise. I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend is attached to the Department of Education and Science. Although this has been done, I hope that she feels that she has authority to deal with the whole range of the arts, even if they do not automatically come under the normal functions of the Department. I hope that my hon. Friend's voice will be clearly heard in respect of appointments, in respect of any developments which may take place, and in respect of adequate financial provision for the visual arts, galleries, museums and films.
As I have expressed in the Motion, I congratulate the Government on the initiative shown in the presentation of the White Paper. It is clearly stated as the first steps. I thought that some of the rather miserable criticism made in the leader in The Times was utterly unrelated to the situation. We appreciate the fact that this initiative has been taken and that we have been provided with a broad statement of the Government's intentions. We welcome particularly the fact that the Government say in the White Paper that they intend to expand their contribution to a number of bodies. It will be the job of hon. Members on both sides to ensure that these promises are fully implemented.
I have the greatest pleasure in commending the Motion to the House.

4.27 p.m.

Mr. James Ramsden: The House will wish to congratulate the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) on his good fortune in the Ballot, and on having used it to introduce this discussion upon the arts. Whether or not we agree with all that he has said, at least he speaks from knowledge and experience and as a frequent contributor in previous debates of this kind. As we know, he has, particularly in connection with the North-Eastern Association, a great deal of practical work to his credit. I shall comment later on his view that the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary is correctly placed in the Department of Education and Science

for the proper discharge of her responsibilities to the arts.
Having said those kind words about the hon. Gentleman, I must say that I cannot say anything very kind about the Government—not as regards the content of the debate, but as regards its timing and character. The Government should have a guilty conscience for having denied the House an opportunity for a full day's debate on a White Paper which they pretend to be of the importance of this one. I except the hon. Lady from the strictures I am now making, because I know that she would have wished to have had a debate of this kind. Indeed, I believe that she pressed for it. But the Leader of the House and the Patronage Secretary should have bad consciences about this.
The fact is that there is great interest in the House not only in the White Paper, but in the hon. Lady's appointment to her new position and it is not possible within the scope of a private Member's debate of only three hours for hon. Members to treat this subject as fully as they would wish or to do it justice in speeches of an appropriate length.
I hope that this regrettable behaviour on the part of the Government will not be a precedent, because whatever else can be said about the White Paper it abounds in good intentions. If these good intentions are to be translated by the hon. Lady into facts and achievements she will need from her colleagues a great deal more sympathy for her objectives than she has been able to elicit for the possibility of having today the kind of debate which I am sure she would wish to have had.
I speak as a newcomer to these debates. In making a speech on the arts I enter what is to me a novel field of political interest, but I have already found that it is an extremely agreeable field and one in which a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have taken a keen and individual interest for some time. It is also a field in which, perhaps more than in some others, fruitful collaboration across the Floor of the House is possible in the direction of enjoining on the Government progress of the kind which hon. Members want to see. Collaboration between committees of hon. Members from both sides of the House


who are interested in the arts exists already. As we often do on these occasions, not long ago we had a joint expedition to Knole, by courtesy of the National Trust, to see something of the way in which public money is being expended on that great house.
There is an excellent guide book on Knole with which hon. Members may be familiar. It is published by the National Trust. During our visit I found in it a story which I think is very instructive in the context of this debate. The Sackville of the day—I cannot call to mind the date—was in the habit of entertaining the poet John Dryden, who was a friend of his. He asked him to stay at Knole where he was holding a house-party. He decided that to amuse his guests it would be appropriate that they should each write a piece of original English literature and that the poet Dryden should say who had done best.
When the papers were collected Dryden, with very little delay, awarded the prize to his host, Lord Sackville, who had written:
I promise to pay Mr. John Dryden on demand the sum of £500.
That story is instructive, because, basically, it is what all artists inevitably feel about their patrons, whether private, the State, or local authorities. Judged by this standard, I do not think that the hon. Lady's White Paper is likely to win the Government many prizes.
I do not mean to deprecate what the White Paper proposes, or to suggest that it is by any means negligible, but it appears that the extra measures which the Government propose to take in support of the arts are disappointingly small compared with all the fuss that attended the production of the White Paper and the announcement of the hon. Lady's new appointment. I have been looking at the figures to substantiate what I have been saying. I have checked them as carefully as I can and no doubt the hon. Lady can put me right if I am wrong.
The Government have been making great play with the increase of the Arts Council grant by £665,000 but, as the hon. Lady and the House will know, that grant to the Arts Council is only one in isolation among many in connection with the arts. It will be found from Class VIII of the Civil Estimates that the

estimate for the current year of £10,152,000 for the whole of the support of the arts, that is, including museums and galleries as well as the Arts Council, compares with a figure for last year of £9,395,000. The total increase between this year and last year is a mere £757,000, but as nearly £500,000 of that increase is accounted for by rises in salary the position is that the true increase is a mere £279,000. I should have thought that that was not all that much to make a song and dance about.
Nor is this the whole story. The figure of £9,395,000, that is, for the last year of my right hon. Friends' Government, was an increase of 14 per cent. over the estimate for the previous year, whereas if one puts the salary increase element to the credit of the hon. Lady's Government and forgets about it one still finds that for the year immediately succeeding the publication of the White Paper the Government are only budgeting for a rise in support for the totality of the arts of something like 7 per cent., or half the amount achieved in the last year of my right hon. Friends' Government.
I stand to be corrected on the figures if I am wrong, but I sought to get them out of the Estimates and I do not think that the figures for this year justify the somewhat derogatory things which the hon. Lady has been saying about the performance of the previous Government in the matter of the arts.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State, Education and Science (Miss Jennie Lee): Would the right hon. Member agree to make a comparison also between the provision for the arts made by his party in its first year of office as well as in its thirteenth year of office?

Mr. Ramsden: I shall deal very fully with that in a moment. The hon. Lady will appreciate, when she makes that point that the contribution made by my party in its first year of office and that made by her party in its last year of office when it was previously the Government are very much akin.

Mr. Ridley: Am I wrong in saying that the last Government put the grant to the Arts Council on a triennial basis and that a large proportion of the increase in grant was planned two years


ago by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd)?

Mr. Ramsden: It is true that the triennial system of financing was introduced during the term of the last Government. I shall refer to that in a moment. I should have thought that the figures which I produced sufficiently disposed of the hon. Lady's charges for me not to have to take into account my hon. Friend's point as well.

Mr. Blenkinsop: I intervene merely to say that the hon. Member is not taking into account the promise which we have in the White Paper to make an additional grant for orchestras as soon as we have a report on what is required.

Mr. Ramsden: I realise that there is a large element of promise in a document of this kind, but I have attempted to consider the question on the basis of what is firmly in the Estimates as projected for this year or as having been spent under previous Administrations.
I am not at all clear, and I am sure that my hon. Friends are not either, what the hon. Lady means when she gives the White Paper the sub-title, "The First Steps". If she means the first steps under a new Labour Government, none of us will quarrel with such a title, which would be perfectly objective, but if she means that nothing has been done so far for the arts under previous Administrations, the title is extremely misleading.
I think that I ought to put the facts on record. Expenditure on the arts, including expenditure on historic buildings, has grown from just over £4 million in 1951–52, to nearly £7 million in 1958–59, and to over £13½ million last year. These figures are to be found in the publication, "Government and the Arts", put out by the previous Administration in the summer of last year.
I ask the House to note that the increase from just over £4 million to £13½ million during those years represents an annual average rate of increase which is about the same as, or perhaps even a little more than, the increase proposed by the hon. Lady's Government this year over what was spent last year. Thus, in this year, when for the first time, apparently, the hon. Lady's party has

discovered the arts and has produced this White Paper, with all its attendant publicity, the substantial contribution which her Government are prepared to make is no greater than the annual average rate of increase in the Government's contribution to the arts over the past twelve years or so.
In this context, anyone who tries to wax too party-political on this issue or in comparing the records of the parties lays himself open to looking rather silly.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that my hon. Friend takes over in the last year of a triennium and that the real test of the Government's intentions will come next year, with the beginning of a new triennium? To break through a current triennium is in itself a considerable achievement.

Mr. Ramsden: Yes, I accept that the hon. Lady has her work before her. All I complain about is when she attempts to begin it by belittling the achievements of her predecessors.

Mr. Eric S. Heller: Mr. Eric S. Heller (Liverpool, Walton) rose—

Mr. Ramsden: I do not want to take too long. We have not very long for the debate, and I have given way several time already.
The hon. Lady keeps saying—she said it again last night—that we have never before had a policy for the arts in this country. If she really believes that, she ought to look again at Lord Bridges' 1958 Romanes Lecture, where she will find very succinctly set out a policy for the arts which has, in fact, been developed step by step under the previous Administration. She will find there also the two or three remaining steps touched upon by Lord Bridges which still fell to be put into execution at the change of Government and which are being implemented by her own White Paper. A reader of that lecture six years or so later is struck by how closely the blueprint laid down by Lord Bridges has been followed and is still being followed in the development of a policy for the arts.
Lord Bridges made various suggestions. He proposed that there should be a body concerned with museums and galleries equivalent in status to the University


Grants Committee. We have that now in the Standing Commission. He suggested—my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) mentioned this earlier—that it was desirable to alter the financial arrangements so that grants to the Arts Council should be made further ahead than just for one year. We now have the three-yearly method of financing. He also suggested splitting the Arts Council Vote so that it would no longer be expected to finance four opera groups in addition to its other activities, and this is now reflected in the present form of the accounts.
Lord Bridges made two other suggestions on that occasion, and both of them feature in the White Paper now before us. One was that there should be better provision—perhaps it would be more accurate to say some provision—for capital expenditure for housing the arts. I am glad that a start is being made on that this year by the inclusion of a capital element in the Arts Council grant, with provision for, I believe, up to £250,000. We welcome this.
Lord Bridges' other and more important suggestion concerned what he referred to as the diffusion of the arts. I find in this the most interesting part of what he had to say. He pointed out that the principal difficulty in State patronage being provided for the arts on a scale which would not look ridiculously parsimonious to those who really cared about such things was the view widely held in the country not only by private individuals but even by some local authorities and Government Departments that it was not right to spend money on the arts when, for example, work and expenditure still fell to be devoted to things like hospitals, improved housing, schools and so on. He described this in 1958 as an entrenched attitude, and I think that there is still evidence of its existence today. He thought that, before State patronage could operate effectively, this attitude had to be overcome.
Lord Bridges referred also to the view that it is in some way wrong to spend money on the arts which might be said primarily to benefit the well-to-do instead of improving the physical conditions of life of the less fortunate. He said that he detected in both these attitudes a vestigial relic of puritanism, and he went on to suggest how they could be over-

come. He said that the right way to break down such attitudes was to try to create a climate of public and official opinion which would not only assent to greater expenditure on the arts, but would actually come to demand it for people as a right, and he indicated that the only way to do this was by an improvement of education in appreciation of the arts so that there would be a new generation coming along who would expect better things than their fathers had had.
Lord Bridges' solution to the problem was, as he put it, diffusion of the arts partly by education and partly by better distribution, that is, ensuring that the best is available for all those who want it, not just in the metropolis but, following the lines of what the hon. Member for South Shields has said, in the provinces as well, these things being made available through the good offices not just of the central authority but of the local authorities, too. It seems to me that, stripped of a lot of its verbiage, the White Paper contains really no more than the hangover from the policy for the arts set out by Lord Bridges which the previous Government did not carry through, and these elements form the central core of what the hon. Lady has put before us. To that extent, we can, I think, accept the hon. Gentleman's Motion.
I want to say a word about the hon. Lady's new post. I doubt whether it was necessary to mark the new emphasis on education by putting her in the Department of Education and Science. She would have been in a better position to do her job from some other post in Whitehall. One of the things that the arts have suffered and suffer from in this country—and here I include the preservation of historic buildings as well as amenities—is the proliferation of official bodies with responsibility for promoting the arts and an even greater proliferation of unofficial bodies dedicated to jogging the elbows of the official bodies.
The result is that the efforts of those who care for the arts lack proper co-ordination in many cases and they tend to get defeated in detail by those who do not care so much. The hon. Lady's new post adds unnecessarily to this proliferation because it puts another finger in the pie—indeed, more, because her


responsibilities do not extend either to Scotland or to Wales, I understand.
The opportunity of creating a new post should have been taken to reduce some of the existing proliferation and overlapping. Many people, I think, may regret the decision that responsibility for this should have been taken from the Treasury. But if one concedes that it was right to do so, then surely it would have been much better if overall responsibility had been given to the Minister of Public Building and Works—and I mean the Minister. This is a job which, if proper weight is to be put behind it, will need to be done by a Minister of Cabinet rank even if not by a member of the Cabinet itself.
In addition to responsibility for ancient monuments and for making grants for their preservation, the Minister of Public Building and Works should also have been given responsibility, which now falls to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, for the listing and preservation not only of buildings, but of groups of buildings. I do not believe that this job is being done properly as it is. The situation is one where time is certainly not on our side. If proper resistance is to be organised to developers who are doing, from their point of view, a perfectly proper job in giving the public what it needs in the way of super markets and multi storey car parks and to local authorities concerned with improving rateable values, a very strong hand must be on the reins in Whitehall—and it must be situated where it can be exercised with effect. I make nothing personal of this, but I do not think that the hon. Lady, situated in the Department of Education and Science, will be able to carry the guns required.
To the extent that the White Paper sets out two logical steps in the development of a policy which was initiated as long ago as 1958 and has been enlarged by the last Government during the last five years, we can accept it, but we feel that an opportunity was lost, with the creation of the hon. Lady's new post, in that she herself has been placed where she will not be able to exercise her influence and her undoubted talents as fully as she might have been able to do in another Department. I hope that it will not be long before this mistake can be put right.

4.55 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: I welcome the intervention of the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) in the important and interesting field of the arts. I did not agree with much that he said and particularly disagreed with his attempt to denigrate the White Paper. Indeed, he made very heavy weather of it. His comparisons with the previous Administration were as fallacious from the point of view of its arithmetic as they were of its spirit. He was entirely wrong in his conclusion that the Government have not made an immense advance on the last Government's performance.
The White Paper contains so much provocative matter and covers so wide a range that it is difficult to confine one's remarks in the limits imposed by this short debate. Much as I would like to comment on the whole range of ideas contained in the White Paper, I propose to restrict myself to a very few observations, which, I hope, will be constructive ones.
First, I want to add my congratulations and thanks to my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science who was largely responsible for preparing this White Paper and drawing up the policy it contains. I consider the White Paper to be an outstanding State document which will prove to be of historic importance if the action it envisages becomes translated into reality—as we all assume it will be.

Mr. Robert Cooke: Oh.

Mr. Strauss: The hon. Member laughs, but on this matter, as on so many others, he is probably in a minority of one.
The White Paper has two special merits. One is that it provides what we have never had before—a comprehensive Government survey of the whole field of public support of the arts and it considers this a matter of such social importance as to justify the appointment of a Minister especially charged with this responsibility. What is perhaps of equal importance, contrary to the fears of many, the Minister is not to usurp the functions of the Arts Council in deciding where Government subsidy should be given and how divided.
The other merit of the White Paper is that, in place of the previous reluctant 

and niggardly approach, it breeds a crusading spirit of keenness—a determination to do not as little as possible but as much as possible. Further, it appeals—and I hope that it will appeal successfully—for the active participation of all those in public and private life who are in a position to help and it gives proof of the Government's sincerity by declaring an immediate substantial increase in the Exchequer grant to the Arts Council—a far greater increase than has ever been made before.
In the past, the Chancellor has normally cut down the Arts Council's grant applications, although these were based on estimates prepared by the recipient bodies which had already been pared to the bone. The result, as the White Paper indicates in paragraph 93, is that many of our potentially finest artistic enterprises have been running on a Poor Law relief basis, shamefully lower than in every other European country, while those responsible for their activities, instead of developing and experimenting, have had to devote much of their time trying to keep these enterprises alive.
Now we have reason to hope that those days are over. The belief that a Labour Government would do more to raise the cultural life of the country was a major consideration in the minds of many who voted for the Labour Party at the General Election. The White Paper fully justifies their confidence.
I am particularly interested in the emphasis given in the White Paper to enabling those who live in the provinces to see and hear the best London productions of opera, ballet and the theatre. That this has not happened in the past, and is not happening today is a real grievance which has often been voiced by those who live in the provinces and their representatives in the House, who argue that it is unfair that such a high proportion of the Exchequer subsidy For the arts should be concentrated on London.
As some rectification of this anomaly, a condition to some of the Arts Council grants has been that the recipient opera and ballet companies should tour the provinces extensively. But this is an

imperfect solution. It rarely provides the provinces with the same standard of performance which Londoners enjoy. The reason is that the equipment and facilities in even the best provincial theatres are comparatively poor and the companies are required to appear in many small towns where the facilities are shockingly bad, making a good performance impossible.
This, in turn, demoralises the companies whose members find long absences from home and weekly changes of miserable "digs" depressing enough anyhow. It is getting increasingly difficult, and soon it may become impossible, to persuade London performers to co-operate, particularly when they know that, when they do perform, neither they nor their company can do so at their best.
The situation is deteriorating and there is only one remedy, which will take time. This is touched upon in the White Paper, but not developed. To give the provinces what London gets, the leading national companies—Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells, the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company—should not be expected to spread themselves thinly over the provinces and appear in wholly unworthy and ill-equipped theatres. They should concentrate their provincial tours on a small number of first-class theatres in about eight population centres. For those who live outside the towns where the theatres are located, coach services should be organised to bring them there. In that way and in that way only can those who live outside London enjoy the same quality performances as Londoners.
But that immediately raises a serious problem. Where are the centres to be? Where are the new theatres to be built, or existing ones brought up to standard? Which local authorities are to be encouraged and which discouraged from providing such theatres? An overall plan is required. An authoritative commission should be set up immediately to make a national survey, in consultation with local authorities, and to report where the good theatres should be located. Grants should be provided by the Arts Council accordingly and in the theatres selected in this national network the national companies could play repertory for a month or more at the highest London standard.
I hope that the Minister will consider this proposal. It is the only way in which the provinces can be properly served. If one were forced to make a choice, I would personally give such a programme priority over the building of the National Theatre and the new opera house on the South Bank which is estimated to cost at least £14 million.
There are two other matters with which I want to deal as briefly as possible. The first is the desirability, set out in paragraphs 68 to 70 of the White Paper, of embellishing public buildings with sculpture and paintings. There is no more effective way of helping artists, especially the younger ones who have not yet established themselves, to earn a living and at the same time to bring living art to the people. The scope is limitless. It is not only the Government and local authorities who can play their part, but nationalised industries and private undertakings.
It is not only the new buildings which should display sculpture and paintings, but the existing ones. The waiting rooms in hospitals and railway stations, post offices, the entrance halls to Government and private offices, which today are for the most part dreary and depressing, could all be made gayer by murals and paintings. Housing estates and public parks could all be made more attractive by sculpture. The L.C.C. did valuable pioneering work in this direction and its example could usefully be followed throughout the land. The opportunities are unlimited. So is the number of good artists who are capable of worthily utilising those opportunities if given the chance. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider it, one of her main objectives to stimulate such activity.
In paragraph 14 of the White Paper mention is made of the desirability of promoting higher standards of architecture. Nothing could be more important if beauty and grace are to become an integral part of everyday life, for the architecture of a city determines the spiritual atmosphere in which its people live and work. The buildings which are put up today determine it not just temporarily, but for the next 100 years.
It is, therefore, deplorable that in our large towns, particularly London, we have allowed during the last 15 years the

erection of so many monstrous huge buildings which will dominate city vistas for generations to come. This is wholly unnecessary, as high office and apartment buildings can be things of great beauty, pleasing and indeed exciting to all who see them. Many such fine buildings have been erected during recent years in New York as well as other American cities and throughout Europe, but regrettably few in Britain. For generations to come our town dwellers will have to suffer from this failure. It is time to call a halt.
This is not at present the responsibility of my hon. Friend or of the Government, but I suggest that it ought to be. It is a national responsibility which transcends that of any local authority. An aesthetic consideration is involved which transcends the immediate gain available to a private developer concerned only with making the maximum profit out of the land which he owns.
It is fine to have art centres, picture galleries and good theatres in our cities. It is equally important, possibly more important that the buildings which constitute the cities, particularly the giant buildings which dominate them and which all their inhabitants see daily, should be examples of the highest expression of architectural art. As they were in ancient Greece and Rome and the great cities of Europe in medieval times, so they should be in modern England. I beg my hon. Friend to take seriously this too often neglected aspect of culture in a civilised society and to consider with her colleagues and the architectural profession what best can be done about it.
In this and all the other proposals in the White Paper my hon. Friend is fortunate in having a marvellous opportunity for making the country richer in the arts. The climate is right for an advance. There is an awakening sense of responsibility among local authorities; influential public opinion is growing more alive to the need to do things; and we have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who, instead of desiring to apply the brakes, wants to apply the accelerator, slowly but surely.
The most heartening part of the White Paper is perhaps not its contents and its immediate proposals but its sub-title—"The First Steps". We appreciate that the succeeding steps cannot be as fast as many of us would like, but we


have every confidence that during the coming years the actions foreshadowed in the White Paper will fully live up to its exciting promise.

5.9 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I want to make a very short speech. I do not intend to spend time on the no doubt fascinating question of whether the Conservative Party would be better or worse than the Labour Party over the arts. Nor do I want to say much about whether the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science is in the right place in the Government, except this. The Ministry of Public Building and Works is a most admirable Ministry for preservation. But if it is to take on responsibility for the arts it will have to break into a field in which, up to date at any rate, it has had no experience and for which its qualities are very ill-suited.

Mr. Ramsden: It does a good deal of patronage.

Mr. Grimond: That may be, but its main work is preservation. It puts out a great spread of white gravel and affixes a notice which says that it is the headquarters of Westminster and that people must behave themselves. It then maintains the monument in the condition in which the Government inherited it. The Ministry of Public Building and Works has extremely good craftsmen. Its restorers are wonderful. But I do not believe that it would have the right approach to the living arts.
I found myself in agreement with the three principal points made by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) on provincial theatres, the importance of Government patronage and the standard of building. I should like to follow him in giving encouragement to the Minister, although mine will be of a more negative sort. The hon. Lady can comfort herself with the thought that she is one of the very few members of the Government who are unlikely to do much harm. How much good she may do is a very different matter because no one knows how to produce good art. Good art has emerged out of patronage, persecution, affluence, poverty, atheism and the

Church. I do not suppose that any Minister will be arrogant enough to suppose that she can conjure up good art from the deep. All that I can assure the hon. Lady is if there are good artists, and if she does the wrong thing, they will get round it and art will emerge somehow. If she does the right thing she may be of help to them.
I should like to turn to paragraph 76 of the White Paper, which says:
There is ample evidence of the need for a more coherent, generous and imaginative approach to the whole problem.
Generous—certainly we should be generous in the provision of facilities, and I want to say a word about that later. "Imaginative" is a word of which I am a little chary, especially when it is used in connection with public Departments. The imagination of Ministries is something about which I feel a little unhappy. I feel all the more unhappy when I look round to see what they do in their own immediate surroundings.
The Palace of Westminster is not a great example of imagination. If the Harcourt Room, for instance, is an example of what imagination means in Government patronage, spare us from it. I have sat in conferences with my more serious-minded colleagues when we have approached Ministers about some aesthetic problem. We have all deplored, the standard of public taste, but have sat in ministerial rooms which beggared description. They were sometimes of a squalor and ugliness which any ordinary member of the public would have rejected long ago. Yet we are the people who are set up as arbiters of public taste. I hope, as the right hon. Member for Vauxhall said, that we shall have a better standard of taste from the Government and a better example.
The question of coherence is linked with the regional approach to which I am extremely sympathetic if it means certain things. I agree with it if, for instance, it means decentralisation. I agree with the right hon. Member for Vauxhall that there is great need for a chain of proper regional theatres, not necessarily in the middle of large towns, because very few people live in the centre of these towns, and there is a tendency to go to some pleasant surroundings in the country,


where one can dine and see a play or an opera as at Stratford and other festival centres.
There are certain forms of art, like opera, which must be conducted on a regional basis. But art is a very quicksilver affair, and I do not think that we can lay down that art will fit into a given regional pattern. It crops up in the most extraordinary places. Mr. Wallis begins painting pictures in St. Ives. Art pops up in Liverpool, in coffee bars, in Mary Quant shops—indeed, in all sorts of odd corners. This is the living art of this country, and very good it is. It does not conform to any standards of regionalism or any other great coherence which we try to impose on it. It will grow up in all sorts of odd corners. Let us by all means provide it with facilities and encourage it, but do not let us force it into a pattern.
One of the most encouraging things of recent years has been the success of art in the schools. Children draw, dance and sing extremely well. I hope that this sort of thing will be promoted and encouraged for all it is worth. It may be, as the White Paper suggests, a flash in the pan. But let us have the flash. The pan will be no worse for it afterwards.
I am a little frightened by the analogy with the social services in paragraph 98 of the White Paper. I do not think that art is a social service. The Government's attitude to art should, in my view, be to encourage people to take part in it. It is not for us to say what is or is not art, or to lay down what is or is not good taste. We must provide good facilities for acting, opera, and so on, and encourage as much variety as possible. To talk about art as a social service creates an over-centralised picture.
Paragraph 100 of the White Paper says that there is a revolt
against the drabness, uniformity and joylessness of much of the social furniture we have inherited from the industrial revolution.
I suggest that "social furniture" is a drab, uniform and joyless expression and that it should not appear in a White Paper on art. It will undermine our confidence in the Government's ability to deal with art if this is the sort of expression which is used about it. Further, if it means anything, it probably is not true. I doubt whether Victorian

building is much worse than modern building. The Industrial Revolution produced many aesthetic horrors, but so have local authorities, the Government and the universities; and they are continuing to do so. The standard of modern architecture is not so good that we can afford to be supercilious even about Victorian architecture. There was a lot of good art and taste in the Victorian era.
I am slightly frightened by the idea that art must be put in centres. I should be a matter of general taste. It should exist in the home, the car, clothes, and everywhere else. Whilst centres are perfectly good for holding exhibitions and concerts, we do not want to get into a dichotomy in which we have a dose of art from four to six in the afternoon in the art centre and then dress, speak, and behave non-art for the rest of the day.
May I make one or two suggestions? I hope that the Government will go in for regionalism as a form of decentralisation in the provision of facilities. We should have an opera house in Scotland. It is a scandal—and I know that the Minister will be sympathetic to this—that there is no opera house in Scotland. It is quite true that the dressing facilities of most Scottish theatres and, I dare say, of north English theatres, are inadequate. By a fluke, I believe that the modern art gallery in Edinburgh is a success. It was, as a matter of economics, stuffed into a house which the Government happened to have in the middle of the Botanic Gardens. But this has not worked out too badly. It should be considered whether it could be extended on its site because the sculpture in the Botanic Gardens is effective. In this way an artistic form is created almost by chance. I hope that we shall not impose a pattern by saying that there is a site for an art museum and therefore we must have one there. Let us spend the money possibly in the Botanic Gardens and on acquiring more pictures.
On the question of the acquisition of pictures, there is far too big a gap between the funds available for provincial and Scottish and Welsh galleries and the funds available to central galleries in London. It is difficult to buy an ugly Impressionist picture. The National Gallery has bought two at vast expense—those two dancers by Renoir. I confess that the latest Cézanne may


show an important historical development, but it is not worth £½ million.

Mr. Stanley Orme: The right hon. Gentleman, in a very interesting and free-flowing speech, has covered many points. He has just referred to the purchase of pictures in the Western world. Surely what is wrong is the price aid the fact that these pictures are set as valuables like diamonds and other valuable assets at a price— —

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Samuel Storey): Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot make a speech. An intervention must be made just for the purpose of clarification.

Mr. Grimond: I wholly agree with the hon. Member. Let him be comforted, however. One can go about the country and buy reasonable pictures which are out of fashion. One has only to scrounge about in galleries and elsewhere to find them without having to pay out £½ million. These big prices are out of all reality. The pictures for which they are paid are bought for prestige purposes either to bolster the ego of the gallery director or to be put in a bank to bolster the funds of a corporation or a rich man. I do not entirely disapprove of this, because their money might just as well be employed in buying expensive pictures as buying anything else which somebody with £500 million would spend it on.
But the Government should not encourage this tendency. If they have a lot of money to spend, I would rather see them encouraging living artists and provincial galleries than spending vast sums of money in that way. I would let "Titus" go to Los Angeles. It is a charming picture, but I do not believe that it is worth the sort of money that the Government would have to pay.
Furthermore, I would deny money to museums and galleries which keep stuff in the basement. Art is meant to be looked at and to be enjoyed. Why not send some of those treasures to the Palace of Westminster, the embassies or the museums and galleries, or sell them? They are not meant to be kept in cotton wool because a scholar may one day want to look at them.
I would make a charge for admission. It would not be a big charge, but if people can spend the money they do on whisky

and cigarettes it should not be a great hardship to be asked to pay a shilling or two to go into the National Gallery or the Tate. People pour in for exhibitions, and I am encouraged to see it. The recent exhibitions at the Tate have been packed. An exception could be made for children or schools, but if a charge for admission meant that we would have better and more cheerful museums or that we could have a museum in which furniture, pictures, and all forms of art of a certain period were exhibited together in an appropriate house in the provinces, and so on, it would be worth while. To a Government who are pressed for money, I suggest that they should consider making a charge.
I finish this short and incoherent speech—but this is a short debate and many people want to speak—by saying that I am not at all pessimistic about art in this country. The trouble is that people do not look for it in the right places. There is good design to be found in all sorts of ordinary things, like clothing and motor cars. There are one or two first-class architects. There is excellent ballet. Our patronage of ballet and opera has not been all that bad, but it is in danger of being over-centralised. Certainly, compared with many countries we are parsimonious.
My last point is that when we say that we will patronise the arts and that local authorities, trade unions and everyone else should do so, artists are people who want decisions. One of the frustrations for them is the endless passing round from committee to committee in which somebody says, for example, "We do not like that design. Cannot we move it?"
If we are to have the type of design of which the right hon. Member for Vauxhall spoke, of streets laid out to a plan, with statues and the rest, it must be an artistic undertaking done as a whole by a man who probably is not able to adjust his designs. This is a tricky matter for local authorities, but we must face the fact that art is not something which can be cabined and confined within the rules of the Civil Service. I wish the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary every good fortune in her new office, and on the whole I would advise her to keep out of the Ministry of Works.

5.24 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), as he has said, has a somewhat incoherent idea of what constitutes coherence. He has, however, made an entertaining and enjoyable speech, although I profoundly disagree with him on one point. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that art is a fluff, something that grows on top of society. I suggest that it is an actual emanation of the sort of world in which one lives. The sort of art, and, indeed, entertainment, whether one talks in terms of pop, jazz, culture or whatever it may be, which emerges from a society is an aspect of the very nature of that society. It contributes to it, it comes from it.
To give an example, one can see a difference in the nature of what goes on at the present time from what was the case a few years ago, if one considers the impact that public money already has upon the art and entertainment that we enjoy. If we were to remove the existing public money, parsimonious though it is, we should lose all our major orchestras, all our ballets and opera companies and half the repertory companies throughout the country, all of which are dependent upon the Arts Council in greater or less degree, and so upon public money. The injection of public money is of vital importance to the whole artistic activity of the country.
What we are talking about in the White Paper and the reason why we support it is not only that it provides for an increase in the total sum, although, as has been pointed out from the Opposition Front Bench, this increase is modest in itself. It is not only this which commands our support. It is also the attitude in the White Paper, which is a new attitude, and it is also that the White Paper envisages and promises a much greater development. Before making my detailed criticisms of the White Paper, I should like to give that general support for what, I believe, is a really new and most promising approach.
The injection of public money into the arts is an aspect of a general characteristic of the society in which we live. Private enterprise itself is now dependent in large degree upon a substratum of public

money given to private enterprise quite freely without control by the last Government—far too freely, without adequate supervision. This contrasts with the parsimonious, careful and detailed doling out of sums to the arts. The motto seems to have been, "Too little and too late". The White Paper announces a change and is to be welcomed, but there is much more to be done.
If, for example, we are to recognise public responsibility for the arts we must consider the instrument of our aid. What may have been an adequate channel for a trickle may be quite inadequate for an increasing flow. Secondly, we must look at the whole scene. Co-ordination and coherence must replace chaos and confusion. Thirdly, we must recognise that while it is within our power to increase central aid, the main source of public money, particularly in the vital matter of building, must be the local authorities. We have yet to discover why, broadly, they have, with some important exceptions, failed to shoulder the responsibility which was offered to them in 1948 and what we can do to help them to shoulder it more adequately in the future.
The main instrument of our patronage is the Arts Council, a body which has struggled nobly with most inadequate means. We wish good fortune to its new chairman, without in any way wishing to detract from those who have occupied that position in the past. The Arts Council has many experienced members on its central body and on its various panels. It has an extremely good staff, but it needs to be radically reorganised to undertake its new rôle. At present, it is a little aloof and inclined to inbreeding. Its atmosphere is sort of university-cum-green room and it is not the feeling which we need for a body which is to be the main instrument of a great development of the arts, not merely in London, but throughout the country.
I doubt whether any weekly wage earner has ever entered the portals of the Arts Council building in St. James's Square, except for the purpose of cleaning it. This is the sort of change that we need to make. An element of nomination possibly even an element of election, needs to be introduced into the Arts Council. It needs to become more regional, more responsive, and more


democratic. It needs to establish not only the friendly relations which it has with the regional Arts Councils, but organic links with these bodies, which should have some form of representation on the governing body of the Arts Council itself.
It should become a body capable not only of distributing more money, but of exercising a very much wider authority than it does at present. As I have said elsewhere, all public money should be channelled through it. There should be no special Treasury relationships. Here I quarrel with the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) who seemed to think that the special relationship with the Treasury, whereby the Royal Opera House is put on one side from the general channel of patronage, was a good thing. I do not think that it is. It is bad, because it puts the Royal Opera House in a special and separate position, and there has also grown up a special and separate method of subsidy.
The Royal Opera House subsidy is calculated on the basis of a percentage of the box office take. At the moment it is 17s. 6d. in the £. It is a thoroughly bad method of subsidy. It places a premium on popularity, because the more popular the show, the higher the subsidy. This places far too great a strain on the Administrator who, if he takes a risk, involves not only his box office take, but the subsidy. There was a suggestion that this was to be extended to the National Theatre. I hope that that has been satisfactorily knocked on the head. The Minister may be able to say so when she replies to the debate.
The Arts Council should be allowed to determine who gets the money, and the method of subsidy. The direct box office take, whether £ for £, or 10s. in the £, is a bad idea. There are very much better ways of doing it. For example, one can estimate the probable take of a theatre, say 75 per cent. or 80 per cent. of seating capacity, or the basis of reasonable seating prices geared to the paying capacity of a broad section of the community. Add that up, and calculate on the other hand the cost of putting on the productions and subsidise at a point as near as one cart get to the difference between those two figures. There are, of course, other ways of doing it.
I come now to the question of coherence. When we have reformed our means of patronage, we should give the Arts Council full responsibility. By that I mean responsibility over the whole field, including films and television. If we are not ready to do that—and it may be that we are not—I hope that the next step which the Government will take after the measures indicated in the White Paper will be to give the Minister overall responsibility, as has been recommended by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop). I think that it is proper, at least as an interim measure, that the Minister should be within the orbit of the Ministry of Education, as she now is, but she should be a full Minister of State, and should exercise functions at present being carried out, or rather not being carried out, by the Board of Trade, the Postmaster-General, and other people.
The situation with regard to films is ludicrous. Here we have a known and admitted monopoly of distribution which is strangling the independent British film industry, and which is universally known to be strangling the industry to death. The only people who will not admit this are the stranglers, A.B.C. and Rank, the duopoly distribution organisations.
The late Government took the step of submitting this to the Monopolies Commission. The Commission takes two, three, or possibly four years to report. By that time the independent British film industry will be dead. One of my hon. Friends says that it is dead. That is not quite true. There is still some life left in it, but there is no doubt that it cannot go on for another two years, and this is widely and generally admitted throughout the industry. By the time the obvious is discovered to be so by the Monopolies Commission, there will be no independent British film industry left. We need a third circuit, and we need it now. I hope that it will be possible for the Minister, in consultation with her colleagues, to devise some means of anticipating the inevitable verdict of the Monopolies Commission in this respect.
The Postmaster-General is responsible for television. He takes a levy from the profits of the I.T.V. companies. In a full year, this is estimated to yield about £15 million. This is a very sizeable sum of money in terms of art. If this money


were to find its way into a subsidy for the arts, a real revolution could take place. Such a sum could do enormous good, but what is happening to it? Instead of being put to that sort of appropriate use, or even possibly to help the B.B.C., it is handed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go into the general Exchequer fund. This seems to be quite wrong.
The State must learn not only that there is a right way of giving money but a right way of taking it. The I.T.V. levy is taken in the wrong way. It is taken from the gross profits, which means that it comes off the quality of the programmes. It should be taken after production costs have been met, which would encourage programme expenditure. It could be a larger sum in total, or it could be the same sum, but the point at which the levy is exacted should be subsequent to programme costs.
That is another matter which I hope my hon. Friend will feel is not excluded from the general bounds of her responsibility, and that she will feel it right and proper to discuss this with her right hon. and hon. Friends. A Minister of the Arts surely would readily grasp the point which I have been making, which seems to have eluded the Post Office, and perhaps it is the sort of point which may be expected to elude the grasp of the Post Office.
There are many other things which need to be done. What is the Arts Council going to do—and here I enter a note not of criticism, but of questioning—with the £250,000 which has been promised for the purpose of encouraging local authorities to begin building theatres and other arts buildings? It is about the price of a single, not too expensive, medium-sized theatre, so it cannot be for that purpose. Is it to service loans to pay for architects' fees? If so, who is going to pay for the buildings? Is it the case that the Arts Council, with this £250,000, can envisage the sort of tenfold increase or more arising which will enable it to encourage local authorities to start building? If we start off this year, we have to be able to give them a reasonable assurance that if they embark on plans they will get support from the Government to carry them through. I hope and believe that the Minister will tell us that this is the case.
Some local authorities have funds available, but most do not. If the State is prepared to offer £ for £ in the case of approved building projects we shall have some real arts buildings. If not, we shall have to await the introduction of some method of raising local money which is less regressive and harsh at the lower levels than is the present rating system. I greatly welcome the news that the Government are looking into the matter, because one of the reasons why local authorities have not availed themselves to the degree that we hoped of their right to spend the product of a 6d. rate is that under the present rating system almost every expenditure by the local authority is resisted by those who are concerned with local government finance.
But all this should not disguise the fact that the White Paper constitutes a great step forward in spite of what has been said from the Opposition Front Bench. The recognition that the State does not exist only for the defence of the realm or even for the material welfare of its people is a very great thing. That is what the White Paper amply and in specific terms does. It says that the State exists so that people may collectively expand their spirits. This is the virtue of the document, and I am happy to join with my hon. Friend in welcoming it.

5.42 p.m.

Sir Hamilton Kerr: The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) made a wise choice when he used his good fortune in the Ballot to put down this Motion, and I warmly commend him for doing so. I want to reinforce his reference to the British Film Institute. As a former governor, I know the valuable work which it does. The National Film Archive is an immensely important addition to our national history. I ask the hon. Lady not to forget the Institute.
I have two regrets about the debate. The first one is personal. I regret that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) is deprived through illness from being here. He has fought in the past many notable battles for a National Theatre and for increased grants for the galleries. I know how valuable his support is and how deeply he is attached to the service of the arts. A


more serious regret is that so important a subject as this is the matter of a few hours' debate on a Private Member's Motion. I wish the Government had allowed time to discuss at greater length the vital question of giving help to the arts.
I have listened with growing interest to this discussion. It seems that both sides are competing with each other in wishing to spend money on the arts. As a man of Scottish and Irish blood, born in the United States, this fills me with interest. I remember talking to Mr. J. W. Brown, the hon. Member for Rugby in the wartime Parliament, who said that in England it took about 40 years for any new idea to be accepted. This was reinforced by a recent experience I had when I was having my hair cut. I said to the assistant who was cutting my hair, "I get maddened by this country having so much talent which is completely neglected." He said, "You are wrong. If you can survive a lifetime of neglect you are a world beater." Events seem to be moving at last. A few more trumpets are blowing outside the walls of Jericho. Let us hope the walls will start to fall down a little more quickly.
There are two aspects of aid to the arts—aid to living art and aid for the preservation of our national treasures—which I want to stress. I refer, in particular, to the opening paragraph in the introduction of the White Paper, which, to my mind, lays down an absolutely vital principle—a principle which cannot too often be repeated, and must constantly be put before public opinion, namely, that complete liberty is the only atmosphere in which artists can work and in which art can flourish. Hon. Members have referred in earlier speeches to the fact that the days of private patronage are over—such days as those of the fifth century in Greece, Augustan Rome, the Middle Ages, and Europe in the eighteenth century.
Now the State has become the main patron. Committees are notoriously bad judges. The Harcourt Room has been referred to. I think that I am a modest person, but I may be the only one who is willing to admit that he may have bad taste. The decision of a committee shows how difficult it is to reach a genera] level of agreement, except perhaps on

a solution which is not altogether satisfactory. I hope that the principle will be continually maintained that complete liberty is essential to real artistic creation.
We must bear in mind the awful mistakes which are made in many countries, notably those behind the Iron Curtain, where people believe that art is first and foremost a social service, and that this criterion must come before artistic excellence. How many of us have wandered from time to time through the galleries of countries behind the Iron Curtain and have been bored by endless pictures of young, buxom ladies and young people riding farm tractors, or Stakhanovites discussing new projects in the glow of steel furnaces. I do not mean that these are not fit subjects for artists. But in this connection I think of Courbet in nineteenth century France, who painted so powerfully peasants in the fields, artisans and roadmenders, or Daumier, who showed us the Paris Commune, with the terror of the shooting of people at the barricades, and the tricolour flag flying.
These artists put their art first, and their message came later. It is important to remember that an artist who is given complete freedom by his patrons will more often than not convey a new and interesting message. The great Proust, the writer, once said that a great artist is like a surgeon performing an operation for a cataract. He gives us a new vision. How true this is even in respect of the ordinary objects that we are used to seeing every day. Hon. Members who take a walk on the Terrace, or those who go down the river, see London very often through the eyes of Whistler—London with its wonderful blue light, and the haze of evening, which, as Whistler said, transforms the squalid warehouses into the semblance of Moorish palaces.
How many of us who do not speak a word of Russian feel that we know Russia through the work of the great Russian novelists. Travelling to Moscow, before the war, I remember looking out over the endless plains—the dirt tracks—which seemed to disappear into the limitless distance, and the birch woods. I remember subconsciously looking for a manor house, such as the one where Natasha and Prince André met in "War and Peace", or walking down a street in


Moscow and looking for a lumbering and dreamy figure resembling Pierre Bezuhov. Artists, if given freedom, will widen our vision.
I now turn to the second function of the Government, namely, the preservation of our national treasures. I was interested by the reference in the White Paper to the museums. How many of us have wandered from time to time around a small provincial museum which is squalid and badly lit, and whose directors are badly paid? Such museums are failing in their purpose, because their conception of history is wrong. It is often believed that history has a fixed period—perhaps it stopped at the great Reform Bill, or the Parliament Act of 1910. But history is a living process. It is being lived every day. In our provincial museums I would like to see not only the history of the men and women who lived in the area, the buildings they built, and the furniture they used, but also, perhaps, the implements that they used in the field and factory. I would also like to make these museums the centre of living life of the present day, and to see meetings of local arts societies, musical concerts and dramatic performances. I would like to make these museums, hitherto neglected, the cultural centres for their areas.
Secondly, I want to see our museums encouraging the creative instincts. In this connection, I should like to refer to the Jeffrye Museum, in Whitechapel Road, which has attached to it a craft centre, where people, inspired by the examples they see there have a chance to construct a chair or paint a picture. Such a museum becomes a vital centre, where people can go every day.
Lastly, I should like to see a new type of museum, perhaps a museum devoted to artists and their interests. So often when one goes into a museum one sees paintings or objects displayed of periods or countries. I should like to see a museum where are represented artists—either by their original paintings or reproductions—who have tried to pursue the same objective. A room devoted to artists who have studied movements would include, say, the Laocoon, the Venetian masters and Van Gogh. Such a museum would prove of immense interest to artists.
These are the points I wish to make, the encouragement of living art in an atmosphere of complete freedom which must be continually guarded and watched, and secondly, the care of our national heritage, and, in particular, making our provincial museums living scenes of local life.
An immense challenge faces us in the coming age of leisure. We are told that by the turn of the century there will be a working week of only 16 hours. What a chance presents itself either for an immense outburst of creative activity, or else sheer disaster implied in the decline in our national character. Perhaps we may learn in the coming years the truth of my favourite Chinese proverb, that if you have money to buy a loaf, buy half a loaf and a rose.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Ted Fletcher: First, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) on his good fortune in securing time for a discussion on this subject and introducing it to the House. Secondly, may I congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on the publication of the White Paper. It is more than a Report of good intentions. I believe it to be literature in the best sense. It is full of humanity and there is a lack of pomposity. These elements shine quite clearly through the Report. It will be recognised as her Report in a personal sense rather than just another Government document in which she has dotted the i's and crossed the t's.
This White Paper follows a document published by the Labour Party over five years ago, a policy statement called, "Leisure for Living". This was the first major statement ever made by a political party on the use of leisure and support for the arts. Many of the proposals in that Report have been incorporated in the White Paper. We in the Labour Party have always said—this is made clear in the White Paper—that we are concerned about the quality of living.
Our case against modern society is that not merely is it selfish, or that often it shackles economic initiative, but, also, that it perverts the sense of amenity, and that the tawdry values engendered by the profit motive often stunt the capacity of our people for free creative


expression. Because of that we believe art should be in the life of the people, part of the life of the people, and not something imposed on the community, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Hugh Jenkins). It should be something which must grow out of the community.
I believe that it was right and proper that the functions of the Minister responsible for art should be transferred to the Department of Education and Science. I believe that we should have a wider responsibility not only to make the finest provision for the arts, but that this should be part of the curriculum in our schools and the Ministry should have an opportunity to create artistic and cultural interests among students. The Arts Council has an enormous leeway to make up. In the past, in spite of the high standard it has achieved, it has been unable to provide the amount of public support for art because it lacked the funds to do so. We hope that in future the Arts Council will have adequate funds at its disposal. It is encouraging that the amount at the disposal of the Arts Council is to be increased by 30 per cent. following the publication of the White Paper. Reference has been made to the £250,000 established for capital grants to local authorities, and regional associations of local authorities, for building purposes. This must be regarded only as an earnest of the Government's intentions because, obviously, capital grants to finance art centres will amount to much more than £250,000, perhaps for each centre. As a consequence, much more money must be made available in the future for this purpose.
I am particularly interested in the reference made in the White Paper to the part that regional organisations should play in the provision of artistic and cultural amenities. I wish to say a word about the North-Eastern Association of the Arts, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) referred. At the risk of being regarded as parochial or provincial, may I say that I consider there are important lessons to be learned from our activities in the North-East over the last four or five years. Until 1938 very little was spent in the North-East on arts and amenities. Newcastle City Council of which I was, and still am, a member, spent a little over

£1,000 a year on cultural and artistic activities. Most of this money was given in donations to amateur music and operatic societies. In 1958, the Labour Party secured power and I became chairman of the finance committee.
Despite the fact that over the next two years we increased the sum to £20,000, I recognised that this amount was quite inadequate and in conjunction with my colleagues on the council I took the initiative in calling a conference of local authorities in Northumberland, Durham and North Riding of Yorkshire to consider the formation of the North-Eastern Regional Council for the Arts. Following our first meeting, 28 local authorities agreed to make a contribution amounting to a ¼d. rate on the old valuation—it is now ⅛d. on the new valuation—to set up an arts council. Our next job was to get down to the question of writing a constitution for our new association. We have a council of 30 members, half from the local authorities in the region.
The employers' associations, such as the Chamber of Trade, and the Federation of British Industry, have representatives on the executive committee. The trade unions, through the T.U.C. regional council and the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions are also represented. The two universities of the region, Durham and Newcastle, have representatives, and both the B.B.C. and I.T.V. are represented on our council. We have, in addition, three persons who are specialists in various aspects of the arts, so it is a fully representative body.
Immediately we had formed the council we had the good fortune to secure the services of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, who was "rusticating" at that time from membership of this House. He was our acting secretary until he was re-elected as a Member of the House in October of last year. It is a tribute to his initiative arid energy that our initial number of 28 local authorities has now increased to 70. Every major local authority in the North-East, with the exception of a few rural councils, are now affiliated to our association.

Mr. Robert Cooke: The hon. Member has said a good deal about his work on the Newcastle City Council, his interest in the arts and the formation of this association, which is a very powerful


body. Is it not a fact that Newcastle Council is responsible for proposing to demolish Eldon Square, one of the finest squares in the city? What did his association have to say about that?

Mr. Fletcher: The hon. Member has little knowledge of the situation in Newcastle. That decision was not taken until a full inquiry into the circumstances was held. In fact, our planning authority has a full list of the historic buildings in Newcastle which will be preserved. This is done in conjunction with various organisations which are advising and assisting the council. I am not suggesting that a regional authority has the power to influence local authorities in making planning decisions of this description. It is, of course, a matter for consideration whether Eldon Square is an artistic heritage or not. I do not think that it is.

Dame Irene Ward: Yes it is!

Mr. Fletcher: It may interest hon. Members to know that we are preserving the Royal Arcade at an expenditure of an additional £80,000, with very little assistance from central Government funds.

Mr. Cooke: Before the hon. Member leaves the subject of the Royal Arcade, would he not concede that it is only by considerable pressure from an outside body that the Corporation of Newcastle reversed its decision there?

Mr. Fletcher: No. I can say quite categorically that members of the Conservative Party on Newcastle City Council objected to the expenditure of £80,000 to preserve it. The philistines and the people who want to wreck Newcastle are members of the Conservative Party and not the present Labour administration.
There are today 70 authorities affiliated to our North-Eastern Association for the Arts. This year it will be possible for us to raise £100,000 to spend on the arts. The sum of £55,000 will come from local authorities. From industry, whose response we found disappointing, we shall receive about £5,000. The Arts Council are giving this year £30,000 and we receive an income from affiliated organisations such as cultural and artistic societies, women's clubs and trade unions. How do we spend this money? What

would have been the effect on the North-East if the association had not come into existence? When it came into existence three years ago, our orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia Orchestra was on the point of collapsing for lack of finance. It has been possible for our association to devote about £30,000 a year to keep this renowned chamber orchestra going and to allow it to expand.
As far as drama is concerned, we have invited many drama companies to visit the region for three months and we have financed the inevitable loss. We have given grants to various theatres in the region to enable them to appoint full-time managers, for instance, at Middlesbrough and Darlington. We have assisted the People's Theatre, one of the most progressive amateur theatres in the country, amateurs who have themselves raised £150,000 to build their new arts centre in Newcastle. We have assisted the visual arts by making donations to private commercial galleries as well as municipal galleries.
We have assisted in the written and spoken word by establishing an arts review to provide an opportunity for promising writers to have their work printed. We have poetry readings subsidised by the association. We recently had a B.B.C. competition organised jointly by our association and the B.B.C., with a prize of £500. It may interest hon. Members to know that over 250 scripts were received by the B.B.C. for this competition for a play. It will, no doubt, be broadcast in the near future. We have provided transport subsidies for organisations in outlying villages and small towns so that their members can get into big centres of population in order to attend concerts and theatre.
However, this is only the beginning of our enterprise in the North-East. We are now setting our sights a little higher. We are aiming to get a quarter of a million pounds. We will have a conference of local authorities in October to try to induce them to increase their contributions. Apart from the physical aspects of providing money, we have transformed the attitude to the arts in the North-East. There is now a vigorous movement there as a result of our activities. Art organisations have been established throughout the region and there is a new understanding


amongst people on what the arts are about.
In addition to our activities, we have stimulated the local authorities in the region to do something about making provision for the arts. In Sunderland, the local authority is doing a magnificent job. They have taken over as a civic theatre the Sunderland Empire, at a cost to the rates of over £20,000 per year. Great national and international orchestras are brought to Newcastle and the subsidy for this is met by the local authority. We have found it possible to talk about the arts not in terms of their being precious, but as something which belongs to the people. We try to bring these amenities to working-men's clubs. We try to encourage brass band music, for which there is a tremendous following for in Northumberland and Durham. We have assisted in the development of folk music, of which we have a very vigorous tradition in the North-East. We have financed folk dancers to go on tours abroad from Northumberland and Durham.
There is a vigorous and pulsating life in the North-East. We are on the periphery of things economically and possibly culturally, but London can look after itself. In these past years, we have had to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We have had little assistance, until latterly, from the Arts Council in the work which we have been trying to do. We believe that art and culture is all-embracing. Whether it is, as far as our region is concerned, listening to the vigorous music hall items in Bambra's Music Hall, folk-dancing or listening to jazz or symphony music, it is part of the life of the people, and we believe that it should be encouraged.
I am grateful that some attention is being given to housing the arts. More money will have to be made available if we are to tackle this matter in the vigorous manner which will be necessary. I am sorry to be parochial about this, but I think that we in the North-East have made a contribution to this matter. The Arts Council has called our association "the prototype of future patronage", and I believe that now that my right hon. Friend the First Secretary of State has defined his regional boundaries it might well be the pattern

for other regions, that there may be other associations of local authorities determined to do something about the provision of more money for the arts. We want to see the British Film Institute brought into the region. There is a possibility that this might happen if we can get some financial assistance.
We are doing a tremendous job in Sunderland—indeed, the idea originated in Sunderland—in trying to establish a civil theatre circuit to provide employment for actors and actresses. Under this scheme they would be able to tour a whole circuit of civic theatres and so have continuity of employment. Mr. Reginald Birks, of the Sunderland Civic Theatre, has done a lot of work on this scheme. There have been a number of conferences, one recently in London, of local authorities to consider whether this is a practicable idea. I hope that it will be found to be practicable because it would permit groups of actors and actresses to travel the circuit and be provided with continuity of employment.
I would like to see many more civic orchestras. Every local authority of any standing—certainly those with populations of more than 100,000—should have a civic orchestra. There was a tradition in years gone by when every town had its brass band. The brass band seems to have gone out of fashion, but I see no reason why small orchestras of, say, 12 or 15 players should not be attached to every local authority of borough status. The members could be employed teaching in schools, playing at civic functions, giving concerts, and so on.
Local authorities must receive help from central funds. The Arts Council could establish a system whereby £1 is provided from central funds for every £1 raised locally. That would give great encouragement to local authorities and I am sure that if they or regional bodies of local authorities received £1 for every £1 raised locally, much good work could be done. In this connection, the Arts Council is represented on our association and is able to watch expenditure and ensure that public money is not wasted.
I have developed the theme of a local approach to this problem at considerable length because, as I suggested earlier, it is a pattern which might be copied in


other regions. I welcome the White Paper as representing a serious contribution towards bringing the arts and amenities closer to the whole community. At the outset of my remarks I welcomed the language of the White Paper, since it is a personal document in many respects. One can see the hand of my hon. Friend in it.
For many years a great many working people have been conditioned, by their environment, work and way of life, to consider that the best in music and painting is outside their range. Now that people, particularly youngsters, have more leisure time, they are showing a keen interest in drama, music and the visual arts. I have always believed that the public's enjoyment of the arts should be recognised for what it is—the enjoyment of something that should be available for all, something gay and not something that is precious to any one section of the community.
The Leader of the Liberal Party has taken exception to the fact that "social furniture" is referred to in the White Paper. Many people in the regions outside London, particularly in the North, have grown up in an environment of drabness and uniformity. They want to escape from that and enjoy the better things in life. They are joining choral societies, brass bands and theatrical groups. With more leisure time available as a result of automation, there is bound to be an upsurge in the quality of the life we lead.
We should realise that this is a discussion about the quality of life. We spend a great deal of time talking about economic factors—statistics, the possibility of continued employment, economic progress and the rest of it—but we spend too little time talking about the quality of the life we will lead once we have overcome these other problems; once we have attained security, lack of unemployment and sufficient homes.
The White Paper is a most important contribution to that end. I do not suggest that it closes the door on any further thinking on the subject. It is, however, an earnest of the intention of the Government. I hope that in future there will be a widening of approach, particularly in the provision of art centres. More money must be spent and while I have had some

experience of persuading local authorities to spend money on the arts and while I appreciate the difficulties involved, a greater financial contribution must be made. Local authorities must think not only in terms of sewers, new houses, and so on. Money is provided for minority interests such as swimming baths, museums and libraries, but it takes a great deal to convince local authorities to provide at least a ½d. rate for cultural and artistic activities.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss) referred to the provision of amenities when new buildings are erected. The Department of Education and Science could help here, and I hope that local authorities will be enabled to spend ½ per cent., if not 1 per cent. of the cost of new buildings on statues, landscaping and good pictures. A lead in this matter could be taken by the Department.
We are discussing a departure from the policy of the past. We have had 13 years of apathy and neglect. They have been years of marking time. It might be argued that the previous Government spent a little more than previous Governments, but——

Mr. Robert Cooke: Before the hon. Gentleman proceeds, may I ask whether he is aware that the expenditure was trebled and was not just "a little more"?

Mr. Fletcher: If time permitted I would question all the figures used in this debate by hon. Gentlemen opposite. To talk about £10 million or £14 million does not reveal the true picture. Global sums include such things as the preservation of historic buildings.
I am dealing with matters which have a different revenue aspect. It is fair to say that in the provision of money for the arts previous Administrations have marked time. I agree that there have been increases, but they have been more than offset by increases in costs.
At last, we are about to make a new start. The foundation stone for a new look at the arts has been laid by the Government. I commend the White Paper and hope that this time next year we will be having another debate on this subject and will be looking back on today's discussion as a milestone in the history of going forward towards making a real contribution to this most important aspect of


our political thinking; that is, the quality of the life we are leading in the middle of the twentieth century.

6.19 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley: The hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Ted Fletcher) has left me very little time in which to comment on many of the points, some of them erroneous, that he has made, but I would at once say that he was wrong about Eldon Square. The Newcastle City Counell deliberately tried to destroy a group of buildings of international repute, and buildings which are on the special list compiled by the Ministry of Housing. To plead, in mitigation, that the Royal Arcade has been saved ignores the fact that that building has been moved to a new site, and its façade is all that posterity will see.
Frankly, I do not think much of this White Paper. I do not know what is meant by the "temporary inflatable structures" that are mentioned. I would only tell the hon. Lady the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science that "fine words butter no parsnips"—and there are not many parsnips in this document. I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) did far more for the arts than the hon. Lady has so far done—and without, perhaps, quite so much show. He increased many of the grants, but was given singularly little credit from the other side.
I do congratulate the Government on one thing, and that is on having established the hon. Lady with responsibility for the arts. This follows exactly the suggestion which I and some of my hon. Friends put forward three years ago that there should be a Parliamentary Secretary for the Arts. I do not remember the Prime Minister patting me on the back and congratulating us on our suggestion. We received very adverse publicity from the other side, but now there is sublime and general welcome. If I may blaze the trail ahead for the hon. Lady a little more, I would say that I hope to see her in the Cabinet, because she is not strong enough where she is. This work ought to be separated from that of any other Ministry. We should now move to a Ministry of Fine Arts in its own right.
The main criticism of that idea has always been that it would in some way set up a Government taste that would be imposed on artists everywhere. I do not believe that to be true. I think that the Arts Council has imposed a national taste of its own to a far greater degree than any Minister could do. There has been much criticism of the Arts Council, but I think that the Minister would be less dogmatic, hidebound and rigid, because she would have to work through many more organisations than does the Council.
There is no parliamentary control of the Arts Council. It spends public money, but is not accountable to this House for it. No Minister is directly responsible for it, and we cannot put down Questions about it. This, indeed, is taxation without representation. It can be very seriously questioned whether it is right that any body that is not the direct responsibility of a Minister should spend public money. The only other body in this position is the University Grants Commission which, in the name of academic freedom, is allowed to escape detailed accountability. This anomaly should be tidied up. Is it true, or is it not, that, as alleged in the Sunday newspapers, the Arts Council has a special box at Covent Garden where its members can see the performance at any time, thereby jumping the queue? If that is true, it proves the point I have been trying to make.
I agree that a body of the type of the Arts Council is necessary for what I call the corporate artistic activities—the opera, the ballet, the theatre, etc. It is true that we must have a body of this sort to dispense patronage to such corporate art activities, but I want to see patronage dispensed much more diversely. I want to see many other bodies take it up, and use Government money for the purpose. Apart from the Arts Council and the British Council there are many private bodies which could usefully be employed, and receive Government assistance to patronise artistic activities in this way.
There are the many local authorities. Almost everyone who has spoken in this debate has called for further patronage in new buildings by L.E.A.s and other bodies. I am sure that this is a "must", and a job that the hon. Lady


will have to tackle. The Government themselves in all their doings could use more public money to commission sculptures, pictures, literature, and the rest. I should very much like to see a Ministry of Fine Arts use all the channels of patronage and not have us just rely on the Arts Council.
The secret of patronage is diversity and diffuseness. The only time when this country produced worldwide artistic distinction was in the eighteenth century, and that was because countless individuals were able, through their wealth, to patronise countless artists. I do not seek to resurrect that situation—we cannot do it, of course—but what we can do is to copy from that period the multiplicity of the organs of patronage. If we concentrate everything in the Arts Council and channel all moneys through a few pairs of hands, we will not get the sort of diversity, richness and individualism that will lead to an artistic renaissance.
Tolstoy has said:
Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.
I do not believe the Arts Council to be the right body to transmit that feeling. It is biased against private enterprise, as it quite freely admits. It likes municipalised, sterilised performance. It likes proved and finished work. I doubt very much whether it would have supported Shakespeare, or Reynolds, or Constable—and I am quite certain that it would not have supported Diaghilev, the greatest ballet master there has ever been in this country.
Despite what the hon. Member for Darlington has said, the North-Eastern Arts Association is doing its best to drop a private theatre in Newcastle, and it has made life for a private art gallery there extremely difficult. I have not the time to go into the merits of these cases, but, to say the least, very serious doubts can be expressed about whether the best way to dispense patronage is through such Arts Associations.
I want to refer to the regional arts associations—or "little Emrys's", as I call them—because, as far as I know, Parliament never debated their constitution and Government never laid down how they were to be constituted. It seems vitally important that we should

do so. It is important that we should say how the regional arts associations are to be set up, where their money is to come from and what their membership should be. It seems that it is not Parliament that has said this, but the Arts Council itself.
I think that the North-Eastern Arts Association is too big. Its membership is far too big. There are 36 members of that association—that is even more than the Cabinet, which is admitted by all to be too big. Then we have this extraordinary habit of having a trade unionist, an employer, a housewife and every sort of representative on these associations. We do not have artists on the regional boards for industry—why have employers and trade unionists on the regional bodies for the arts?
It seems to me that we should continue to develop the associations in the same way as the Arts Council has been built up; that is, through having a few people skilled in art, or with knowledge of art on bodies regional in character. The chairman of an association should be an ex officio member of the Arts Council, to provide a very close link with it, and there should be very strict rules as to personal and political interest in the representation on these bodies.
I quarrel with some of my hon. Friends over subsidy for the arts. It has been said that only by increasing the subsidy can we prove our love of the arts and our determination to do them well. It has been argued almost on a party basis.
Subsidy is a terrible foot in the door for inefficiency and sloppy management. I am not saying anything against artists, but something against those responsible for the management of artistic activity. I am certain that Covent Garden could make a lot more money. I am certain that if Covent Garden combined its present policy with an advertising campaign and employed someone to run that campaign so that demand rose year by year, it could put up prices for seats for the best performances and considerably reduce the subsidy. The same could probably happen in regard to the theatre to some extent. For generations the theatre flourished and thrived not only artistically but financially. Television can be employed to assist the theatre,


to increase its audiences, and used not as a competitor but as an assistant.
More than anything, we should charge for entrance to public galleries. The Leader of the Liberal Party suggested this. The fact that more people visit exhibitions when charges are made than when they are not, shows that it is no longer possible to go on advancing the argument that we must provide—in a rather patronising way—free art for the people when they are prepared to pay a shilling, or whatever the charge may be. Art exhibitions on the Continent have far higher charges and many of them are self-supporting. I wonder whether we are right in our present policy.
Whatever we do about charges for entrance to galleries and museums, there can be no excuse for the Arts Council to lose money on its exhibitions. I believe it loses something like £70,000 a year on exhibitions of pictures. The Royal Academy makes a profit, on average, of £23,000 a year. This surely is another instance in which subsidy has weakened the resolve to be efficient and successful. I very much hope that the Arts Council will be asked not to make a loss on exhibitions in future.
I should like to see some more ideas put forward and more steps taken. Without going into the many suggestions which I could make because I have not time to do so, I return to consideration of the subject in terms of the individual. Art is for the individual and not a matter for the Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Sir H. Kerr) said, it has a lot to do with the liberty of the individual. It is senseless to tax our society to a point where it cannot afford any art of its own and then to provide society with art from Government institutions through municipalised art, and that alone. One of the troubles about art in this country is that we live in a Socialist society where tax rates are too high. Will the hon. Lady, the Minister, have a word with the Chancellor of the Exchequer? She will find that many things he has done in his Budget and many things he would have liked to have done will do much more harm to the arts than anything she can do. Death duties, Capital Gains Tax, Surtax will kill completely private patronage and private collection.
I do not want to end up in a country where every work of art is in a public gallery and all art is municipalised, sterilised and organised by a corporation. I want art to be a relationship between one individual and another. Above all, I do not want it to be a ritual performance of what has been written and painted in the past, but something which is living, a renaissance, so to speak, of art; a reawakening of our national culture. I am certain that if we are to do this we must have a very different approach from that which I see in the White Paper.

6.34 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Miss Jennie Lee): We are all indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) for giving us an opportunity this afternoon to discuss the arts. I think the White Paper has been received by most of the Press and public opinion with great courtesy and great kindness. I have no quarrel at all with some of the criticism. Indeed, I would have been alarmed if there had been an atmosphere created that this White Paper set out the full policy for the future of British art.
What we say quite clearly in it is that this is a beginning. But there are different kinds of criticism, and my sympathies went out to the right hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) because obviously in speaking from the Opposition Front Bench he had to do his best and had to make out so far as he could a comparison showing that there had been no progress and that the attitude of the present Government and provisions and promises of the present Government were virtually no different from what had happened before.
One of the first things I did on being asked to investigate the state of the arts was to ask for a chart to be prepared for me, fairly, I think, going over the full period during which hon. Members opposite were responsible. I should not have thought it fair or responsible for me to have tried to judge hon. Members opposite by what they had done in any one month, or three months, or even a year, but I think it perfectly fair that I should bring to the House a chart which sets out all 13 years from 1951 onwards when it was the privilege and responsibility of hon. Members opposite to look at the arts policy of this country.
I have the chart here. It shows a general graph of provision for the Arts Council including provision for Covent Garden. I have the whole set of figures set out. Although I shall not quote all of them, I shall quote one or two to illustrate my point. If hon. Members opposite want the chart put into the Library I shall be happy to oblige. I found that 1951, the year when hon. Members opposite went into office, was a crisis year, a year of great economic difficulties; but I do not think any hon. Member would say that the pound was in a more perilous position in 1951 than last autumn when the present Government took over. When hon. Members opposite went into office in 1951 their excuse for not dealing with the arts was that there was an economic crisis. Compare the attitude of the two parties. In the autumn of last year and the first months of this year, in spite of all the difficulties and preoccupations of the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a 30 per cent. increase was conceded to the Arts Council—£665,000 extra on its grant compared with the previous year.
It is to fair to see how hon. Members opposite handled a crisis situation. In 1951 there was no increase for the Arts Council. Instead there was a decrease of £5,000. Obviously in a crisis the first thing that had to be cut was the arts. We, even in a crisis, seek to give the arts priority, but hon. Members opposite said, "We can chisel away £5,000." When the country had had the advantage of Conservative rule not for six months but for a whole year, hon. Members stepped up the grant made to the Arts Council. They stepped it up by an amount slightly less than one-fifth of what the present Government have given in this crisis year. Having taken that adventurous step, hon. Members opposite obviously thought that they had gone too far, so in the following year they made a decrease of £10,000.
We can go through this chart. It shows that although we got off the ground in a matter of weeks after taking office, produced a White Paper and acted upon it well within six months, it took hon. Members opposite over six years even to begin to get off the ground. In 1954–55 there was a decrease of £10,000. That was put back with an additional £25,000 the following year. There was a daring

£45,000 increase the following year, then £68,000, then £55,000. Then hon. Members opposite thought that they had gone much too far.

Mr. Ramsden: I am not clear whether the hon. Lady is still talking just about the grant to the Arts Council. I conceded that she had done the Arts Council well this year. What I complained about was the failure to make a very substantial increase in the totality of grants. Ought she not to compare year by year the whole effort put into support of the arts?

Miss Lee: I will come to all that. In the meantime, it is well to get the priorities right. We said that we were concerned above all, in this immediate crisis situation, with the living artist; we wanted to go to the rescue of our painters, our singers, our sculptors, theatres falling into disuse, all the things which were of an emergency nature, so I begin with these. In 1959–60 the increase was £7,000. But why should I go on? The highest increase in the arts grant in any year under hon. Members opposite was in 1963–64 when it reached something less than two-thirds of what we have given in this year. In that year the arts grant, excluding Covent Garden, was £400,000.
I should like to put all this behind us, because I have stressed on all the occasions on which I have spoken on this subject that, if we are to have an arts policy worthy of this country, we must crash through both political barriers and class barriers. I would be the last to say that concern for the arts is confined to any one part of the House. We need every individual that we can find in any part of the House, in the parties outside, and in the communities outside, to pool their concern, their skills and their resources if we are to bring Britain forward into the first rank in relation to the arts.
I am afraid that I must make one other reference to those 13 desperate and unlucky years for this country. For 13 years not one single penny was set aside for capital expenditure on the arts. It was not that the problem was not known. It was not that the Arts Council did not provide very able and carefully documented statements asking that provision should be made for housing for the arts. But for 13 years, under a Government


who talked at times of crises and then soon afterwards about "never having it so good", about the affluent society, and all the rest of it, the type of affluence we had apparently found no place for the building of a single opera house in this country.
I will give the House a little progress report of what has happened since we took over. I shall not go back so much on the details of the White Paper, because I know that hon. Members present now are very familiar with them. They know the contents of the White Paper. Above all, as we stressed in the White Paper, we wanted action.
I turn to Government support for the arts to see even if in these last few months anything has been done to forward our promises. One of the first points is that £¼ million has been set aside as a commitment to encourage building for the arts. It may astonish some hon. Members, but I received the most learned advice that I could not spend this £¼ million, that it could not be done in time, and that by the time all the slow processes of getting a project started had been gone through I should find that this was rather too large a sum. I am delighted to inform hon. Members that we have already committed £215,000 of that £¼ million.
I assure the hon. Member who thought that the Arts Council was living entirely a life of its own that just as formerly there was an assessor from the Treasury sitting on the Arts Council there is now an assessor from my Department sitting on the Arts Council and reporting. The hon. Member need have no fears that public money is being loosely or carelessly spent. All this has been gone into carefully.
Nevertheless the Arts Council has been hard at work. I repeat that £215,000 of the £250,000 is already committed, in Birmingham, Boston, Bridgnorth, St. Austell, Shaftesbury, Weymouth and Worcester. I must be careful, because I know that all the others will come treading in on our heels. No—I will not be careful, because I want all the others to come treading in on our heels. The whole purpose of setting aside this fund of £¼ million to encourage building for the arts was to see what response would be won from various parts of the

country. The response that is coming in is wonderful. It is everything that we could have hoped for.
I would draw the attention of hon. Members to the fact that the White Paper clearly states that, if this money is spent in the current year, substantially higher sums will be available for building for the arts in following years. I am perfectly willing to be pressed by hon. Members opposite to go in the direction in which I want to go. They will find that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a good memory. He is also an honourable man. This is a very firm commitment. We are doing our end of it. We are spending the money all right. We are spending it on desperately necessary projects. This is a relatively trivial sum. We shall be delighted to have the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House in stressing the fact that we have got to get further sums, as we have promised, in successive years.
I come to art centres. Here I have the whole lot set down—Birmingham, Boston, Bridgnorth, and so on. Some of them are very modest, involving sums varying in amount from £10,000 to £500. However, the schemes that are envisaged here belong sometimes, as in the Cannon Hill scheme in Birmingham, to very large projects, but sometimes to very modest small-town schemes where an additional £1,000 or £1,500 makes all the difference between their existence or non-existence. Above all, they provide an incentive to neighbouring towns, the inhabitants of which say, "What can be done in a small place like Bridgnorth can be done in our town".
I go on to the Film Institute. I agree with every word that has been spoken by various hon. Members about the plight of our film industry. I was in Rome the other day. I visited the fabulous building erected before the Second World War: it is not the sort of centre for training that we would erect in modern Britain, but there is no doubt about it that it is unfair to ask distinguished public servants like Sir William Cold-stream to look after film archives and build up facilities for training directors and producers to give us the type of quality films we want unless the House of Commons is to provide him with the money with which to do it.
On the matter of films, reports come to me from my assessor sitting on the Film Institute. We are now in a very much closer relationship than ever before in the past. It is reported to me that there is a terrific response coming from the regions—Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Norwich, Manchester, Cardiff, Nottingham, Ipswich, Keele University—with a great many others showing interest. Clearly, if we are prepared to provide the facilities, there is a hunger in this country—inside London and outside London; Scotland, Wales, North, South—to begin to have the facilities for opera, for theatre, and for quality films, of which most citizens have been starved for far too long.
I come on to another point of action following the White Paper. On taking office I found that one of our great orchestras was in mortal danger of being destroyed. I refer to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was no easy matter to deal with the cynics and the defeatists who said that there was nothing else to be done but let it die, but some of us fought very hard so that it should not die. We did not want to take the defeatist line that there were more orchestras than audiences in and around London. We were prepared to take the optimistic line that we would provide better facilities and halls and greater encouragement to build up audiences to meet these wonderful orchestras which are the envy of many parts of the world.
I am very glad to tell the House that last night I was informed that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is going on from strength to strength. Why is this? Among other things when the Russian Ballet comes to London for a six weeks' tour the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will perform with it. It has other engagements and, far from dying, this great orchestra has been saved. It has been saved because even before the Goodman Report is published and brought before the House it has been made perfectly clear in my White Paper that if the recommendations of the Goodman Committee mean that more money will be required to sustain our excellent orchestras that money will be forthcoming. I can assure hon. Members therefore that here again the Chan-

cellor of the Exchequer is keeping his promise to me literally in every sense, and I think that hon. Members will be very satisfied when this Report is brought fully to their notice.

Mr. Ramsden: When will it be published?

Miss Lee: It will be published soon and I am sure that the right hon. Member will be as satisfied as I am when he sees it.
We are finding that the Arts Council and its committees, working with very limited and inadequate staffs, are coping heroically with the problem of having five times as much money as formerly to spend on grants to young artists. It is still not very much, but £50,000 is five times, £10,000, which was the limit that hon. Members opposite even in their most affluent days were able to find. We are going ahead. Scholarships are being arranged as fast as is humanly possible. A great deal has been said about the North-East Arts Association by my two hon. Friends, the Member for South Shields and the Member for Darlington (Mr. Ted Fletcher) who have done so much for it. I endorse everything that they have said.
The great thing about that association is that it gives the best kind of encouragement to local authorities to spend money on the arts, because the individual councillor may be a little hesitant and tempted not to spend, knowing the claims of housing and health and aware of higher rates, unless he is assured that he is meeting genuine public opinion in the area. When arts associations are set up, one can appeal to the best among industrialists, local trade unions, private donors, schools, universities, and local councils, and to contributions from the centre. All this is being done.
Associations are growing up in various parts of the country. I have been spending every weekend visiting those already in being or seeking to establish themselves or to become larger. The Arts Council quite properly gives £40,000 to the North-East Arts Association, which is more than to any other association, because that association is doing more. This is part of the answer to the question about the quality of the Arts Council.
We must keep in mind that the Arts Council is a nominated and not an elected body, and because it is nominated this puts an added responsibility on the Government to ensure that it is truly representative. Therefore, in modern times a strong appeal is being made to bring new elements into the Arts Council. This is not to discount or denigrate in any way the wonderful work which has been done by distinguished members of the Council in the past, but there is need to ensure that the Council does not have the atmosphere of a political or social clique and that its doors are wide open so that we can all go into No. 4, St. James's Square. I certainly should like to go in there with a good trade union working squad, because for 13 years a most wonderful building has been neglected and is in a very bad state of disrepair. There is something to be said for getting a group of plumbers and painters to do a salvaging job on it.
It is true that the Arts Council is adjusting itself to the new things of a new time. Before ever the present Government were elected the Council produced its Report, "State of Play" to show how concerned it was to see that art centres and multi-purpose buildings were sustained. The Council was already beginning to be "with it". I should be doing the Arts Council no service if I tried to say that it was everything that we desired. The Council no doubt would not say that the Minister was everything it desired, but I am the best helper it has had so far: I have obtained more assistance for the Council from the Treasury than anyone else has ever obtained, and that is something to go on with.
We are bringing in regional representation in one way or another. The Council, for instance, delegates to the North-East Arts Association the spending of a certain amount of money. That is one way of getting representation. None of us is satisfied with the Victoria and Albert Museum grant which has been raised from £50,000 to £100,000, but I have had a glowing letter explaining what this has meant to the Walker Art Gallery, because it has had an allocation which has enabled it to get something which they wanted very badly. Time prevents my reading the letter but it is the type of letter that comes to us from art galleries, struggling

theatre companies and individuals and organisations who feel that at last they have a Government with a coherent and imaginative policy and the beginnings of a generous policy to help them ensure that a better type of life is available to people, whether they live in villages or in cities.
I enjoyed the speech of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond). It was on the run, and he had read the White Paper rather carelessly. It was not necessary for him to say that he did not want the whole of one's artistic experience to be confined to an hour or two spent in an art centre, because he would have found it set out very clearly in paragraph 14 of the White Paper that
In any civilised community the arts and associated amenities, serious or comic, light or demanding, must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as something remote from everyday life. The promotion and appreciation of high standards in architecture, in industrial design, in town planning and the preservation of the beauty of the countryside are all part of it. Beginning in the schools and reaching out into every corner of the nation's life, in city and village, at home, at work, at play, there is an immense amount that could be done to improve the quality of contemporary life.
We want to go through the schools and the homes, but above all we have to track down the loneliness among communities of people, whether old or young, experienced in the arts or rather shyly making their first tentative approach, so that they can have warm contemporary buildings where they can meet together.
There is a great deal of interpenetration of interests. If we can get young people to go along to buildings which are contemporary and gay, where they can dance and sing as they like, then perhaps they will become interested in good design and craftsmanship and we can create an atmosphere which will be better than that of a great many forms of commercialism. It is as easy to be cynical and defeatist about what we are trying to do for the young as about what we are doing for the orchestras and what we are doing in making a beginning for the arts. But I do not believe that those who take that sort of view are in tune with contemporary Britain. There is a great longing for us to be more of a community. Before we arrogantly say that any group of our citizens are not capable of appreciating the best in the arts, let us make absolutely


certain that we have put the best within their reach.

It being Seven o'clock, proceedings on the Motion lapsed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 5 (Precedence of Government Business).

TEACHING COUNCIL (SCOTLAND) BILL

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Clause 2.—(STANDARDS FOR ENTRY TO THE TEACHING PROFESSION.)

7.1 p.m.

Mr. Michael Noble: I beg to move, in page 1, line 16, to leave out "standards of education" and to insert "educational qualifications and".

Mr. Speaker: I think that it would be convenient to discuss, at the same time, Amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 16, to leave out "and fitness to teach"; Amendment No. 13, in Clause 7, page 4, line 16, after "education" to insert "and" and Amendment No. 14, in Clause 7, page 4, line 16, to leave out "and fitness to teach".

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mrs. Judith Hart): Would it be convenient to discuss also Amendment No. 3, in Clause 2, page 1, line 17, to leave out "required of" and to insert "appropriate to"?

Mr. Speaker: If the House so pleases.

Mr. Noble: Further to that, Mr. Speaker, it seems that Amendment No. 5, in page 1, line 22, to leave out "requirements" and to insert "conditions", might be discussed at the same time.

Mr. Speaker: I am not sure that that is acceptable.

Mrs. Hart: Yes, Mr. Speaker, it would be quite acceptable. In the circumstances, I wonder whether it might be convenient to take all the Amendments to Clause 2, that is, including Amendment No. 4, in page 1, line 17, to leave out "entering the teaching profession" and to insert
for registration under this Act".

Mr. Speaker: I do not think that the hon. Lady can quite usurp control of that one.

Mr. Noble: The inclusion of Amendment No. 4 at this stage would not be acceptable Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Then the agreement is that we discuss with Amendment No. 1 Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 5, 13 and 14.

Mr. Noble: I am pleased to move the first Amendment, because, although we had a very interesting and useful debate on this problem in Committee, which created a good deal of interest on both sides, there may well be some hon. Members with a special interest in education matters who were not members of the Committee but who may wish to express a view. I can tell the hon. Lady that, in looking through the Government Amendments as a whole at this stage, I very much appreciate that many of them have clearly been designed to try to meet points which my hon. Friends and I made during the Committee stage.
I think that Amendments Nos. 3 and 5 may be the hon. Lady's attempt to come some way to meet problems which we raised, but they do not meet them entirely, in our view. The problem confronting us was how best to draw up Clause 2 so as to give the Teaching Council the maximum amount of freedom and yet avoid—this was the obvious difficulty—using phrases which, because of their vagueness, might cause trouble later. Our arrangement to discuss Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 at the same time, of course, reflects the fact that Clause 2 and 7 are complementary, to a great extent, in our thinking.
We felt that standard's of education were exceedingly difficult to define. If I remember aright, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin)—who is not in his place at the moment—and, to some lesser extent, perhaps, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) felt, as we did, that educational qualifications were much more easily defined and used. Towards the end of her argument, the hon. Lady admitted that what she and we had in mind was very much the same and that standards of education would virtually amount to, and would have to be translated into, educational qualifications before they had any real meaning.
I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will be able to tell the House that she can come a little further with us than


Amendments Nos. 3 and 5 at present show because, although they move in the right direction, they do not of themselves remove the uncertainty of these rather general terms.
We discussed for some time, and quite rightly, the meaning of the words "fitness to teach." The hon. Lady found that this was most easy to express—I put it no higher or lower than that—in terms of illness, that, for instance, if a teacher was suffering from tuberculosis or some contagious disease, he or she would not be fit to teach. However, most of my hon. Friends were worried about this point because they felt that fitness to teach raised more than the simple question of health.
They felt, like the hon. Member for Govan, I think, that straight questions of health were matters on which local authorities and others have always insisted and would continue to insist, and, therefore, such questions within the terms of Clause 2 were rather irrelevant. In a Clause which is designed to lay down conditions for entry into the teaching profession, we felt that one was trying to define the sort of personal qualities a man or woman should have in being able to manage a class, to keep order in difficult conditions, and other factors of that kind rather than straight questions of health.
This being so, we felt that the words "fitness to teach" should be left out, because they related to something which could not normally be determined until a teacher had had practical experience for a number of months in a school. We felt that they added nothing and, like the words "standards of education", were vague enough to cover almost anything. Educational qualifications, on the other hand, are definable and easily understood. If the words "fitness to teach" were left out, there would be no question at a later stage of young men and women feeling, perhaps, aggrieved because the colleges of the Training Council had barred them from entering their desired profession on grounds which they could not understand and the Council could not interpret in a clear and simple way so that they understood what the position was.
After our interesting debate, the hon. Lady herself found a certain amount of difficulty in making up her mind on what

the right answer was and she very properly asked that she might take the matter back and reconsider it to see whether words could be found which avoided the difficulties which we on this side foresaw but which, at the same time, met the points which she and many of us recognised.
The hon. Lady said that she would make an honest attempt to look at these words and see what she could do to help the Committee get the right answer to the problem. In moving this Amendment, therefore, I do so very largely in the hope that she will be able to convey to the House the difficulties which she now sees and the ways in which she hopes to meet them.

Mrs. Hart: As the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) has said, the Amendments to Clause 2 that he and his hon. Friends have put down, together with more or less parallel Amendments to Clause 7, very much repeat Amendments that he moved in Standing Committee. Indeed, we have before us, in effect, two proposed new versions of Clause 2(1). I hope that the House will bear with me if I quote both versions because this will show the issues clearly. If we accepted the Amendments suggested by the right hon. Gentleman, subsection (1) would read:
It shall be the duty of the Council to keep under review the educational qualifications and training required of persons for registration under this Amendment and to make to the Secretary of State from time to time such recommendations with respect to those standards as they think fit.
We have considered very carefully what could be done to improve the wording and the subsection will read, if our Amendment is accepted:
It shall be the duty of the Council to keep under review the standards of education, training and fitness to teach appropriate to persons entering the teaching profession and to make to the Secretary of State …".
The right hon. Gentleman argued in Committee, as he has tended to argue now, that perhaps the phrases used in the Bill—"standards of education" and "fitness to teach"—which we would retain, are too vague to provide an adequate basis for a statutory provision setting out the general functions of the Council. Similarly, the Amendments to Clause 7 tabled by the Opposition display its dislike of the words "fitness to teach".
The right hon. Gentleman is right in saying that I undertook to consider, in the light of a very full discussion of Clause 2, whether the wording should be altered. As he has also recognised, I have sought to do so as carefully as I could. We have concluded that a number of adjustments in the wording should be made and those which we propose we believe express as clearly as possible the function it is intended to cover by Clause 2, on the one hand, and Clause 7, on the other. I would be out of order if I anticipated precisely the Amendments to be considered on Clause 7, but when we come to them I shall explain them in more detail.
7.15 p.m.
It seems to us right and proper that, in a Clause which is setting out the general functions of the Council—which is what Clause 2 does—we should use a reasonably broad rather than a narrow wording. I think that perhaps I can take the right hon. Gentleman with me on that. We do not wish, under the essential Clause 2, to circumscribe the Council in any way that can be avoided. We see no difficulty in defining the duty of the Council in the way our revision of the Clause would do it. We believe that we need the words used in the subsection and not least the phrase "fitness to teach" in order that the Council can feel able to put forward to my right hon. Friend such recommendations as it thinks fit.
I believe that the Government Amendment, No. 3, will help the House to see the way in which we view the Clause. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman put his finger on the essential nature of the misunderstanding that is liable to arise in considering Clause 2 in relation to Clause 7 when he said that "standards of education", as quoted in Clause 2, would have to be translated into "educational qualifications"—he was quoting what I said in Committee—so as to have real meaning. The essential point is that one has to take as wide a remit as is reasonable under Clause 2 in order to be able to make the more specific and more precise regulations under Clause 7—in other words, in order to translate the duty imposed on the Council under Clause 2 into this follow-up in terms of regulations

to be made by my right hon. Friend under Clause 7.
The effect of Amendment No. 3, therefore, is to make a little clearer than it was the distinction between the duty of the Council under Clause 2 and the powers of the Secretary of State under Clause 7. What we do here is to use the words "appropriate to" instead of "required of", because we think that this assists in clarifying the difference between the two Clauses. So now, under Clause 2, the Council is given this broad duty, comprehensively defined, and because the Council is of the greatest importance it is equally important that it should not be unnecessarily circumscribed in its duty.
Under Clause 7, my right hon. Friend will make regulations governing entry to teaching. We have Amendments to Clause 7 to consider which are designed to clarify the position. Amendment No. 3 is designed to make the distinction between Clauses 2 and 7 clear and to remove any misunderstanding. I hope that, in the light of my explanation, it will be possible for the right hon. Gentleman to take the view that we have gone as far as we can in meeting the understandable doubts felt in Committee and have clarified the situation as far as possible.

Mr. Noble: I think that the hon. Lady has met at least 50 or 60 per cent. of the points we made in Committee. As she promised, she has had a good look at this, and I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: In line 17, leave out "required of" and insert "appropriate to".—[Mrs. Hart.]

Mr. Noble: I beg to move in page 1, line 17, to leave out "entering the teaching profession" and to insert:
for registration under this Act".
This, again, is an Amendment which we moved upstairs and which the hon. Lady resisted. Perhaps the hon. Lady would feel it helpful to the House now to discuss it with Amendment No. 24, to Clause 17, standing in the name of the Secretary of State, in page 10, line 3, at end insert:
teach" means teach in an educational establishment (as defined in section 145 of the Act of 1962) or in an approved school, and "teaching" and "teacher" shall be construed accordingly


since it appears that with that Amendment the Government are trying to meet at least part of our case.

Mr. Speaker: I saw the hon. Lady the Under-Secretary of State nodding assent to that suggestion, but so that it may be on the record I will say that she has.

Mr. Noble: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There appears to be a spirit almost of indecent haste this evening which certainly does not meet with my disapproval.
The problem we were faced with on this provision was whether it was intended or not to control, through recommendations by the Teaching Council, the type of qualifications necessary for schools outside what one might call the "State schools", and there were, of course, the problems of the universities and other educational establishments concerning the words "entering the teaching profession". These could, I think, have been taken to mean the teaching profession of any sort, kind or description.
The hon. Lady made it clear to the Standing Committee that there was no intention, at the moment at any rate, of trying to control entry to the well-known Scottish public schools and some private schools by the Secretary of State. This was something which many of us on this side of the House felt to be important. As we all appreciate, there are different standards, sometimes better and sometimes, I am afraid, possibly worse, in some private schools from those in State schools.
On the other hand, there might well be a good deal of resentment, and there certainly would be, if we tried to control entry to the universities. There might be if we tried to control entry into agricultural colleges and so on and if we tried to ensure that every master in Loretto and Fettes and the other great schools had to be registered. The last thing we would want to do would be to make it difficult for those establishments, which do a great deal to keep up the standards of Scottish education, to get the staff they thought necessary.
By mentioning Section 145 of the 1962 Act in her Amendment, the hon. Lady has excluded university teachers and teachers in the theological colleges and other places of that sort which are now no longer to be considered suitable for

recommendations by the Teaching Council on fitness to teach and standards of education. However, perhaps she would like to explain how far she feels that this exemption goes beyond the universities and the theological colleges and whether it is still her intention and that of the Secretary of State not at the moment to make regulations about the sort of qualifications needed for people in private schools and in the great public schools.
If the hon. Lady is able to do that and to help the House in that way, we can probably accept her serious attempt in Amendment No. 24 to meet our argument.

Mr. Michael Clark Hutchison: I should like to direct attention to Amendment No. 24. In Standing Committee I asked that the Bill, which makes special arrangements for the teaching profession in Scotland, should be a complete Bill and that the interpretation Clause should not refer to other Acts. I cannot understand why interpretations and definitions are not included in the Bill. It is extremely awkward for practising lawyers to have to have recourse to previous Acts. It wastes time, is difficult to follow and can lead to complications. By doing so in this Bill, we are putting through a very shoddy bit of work.

Mrs. Hart: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Clark Hutchison) knows that he has my sympathy for his point of view. I expressed it in Standing Committee. I regret that it is not possible to carry out the whole process of law reform in relation to one Bill in a month or two. If it were, we would have done so. However, I can assure him that it is our intention as far as possible in all our legislation—and we tried hard in this—to omit unnecessary encumbrances by references to other Acts. It was just not possible to avoid them altogether and that is why we have these references to the Act of 1962. I can assure him that we tried and did not succeed, but we have begun a process which will inevitably take us a long time to complete satisfactorily.
The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) had me a little confused when he first put down this Amendment


again, because I was not quite sure what his purpose was. He appears to have two purposes—one which he expressed in Committee and that expressed by his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) about the definition of "teaching profession".
The first stems from a very natural concern about limiting the definition in order that the Secretary of State has no power to make recommendations in respects in which he has no power to act, which is the point originally made by the hon. and learned Gentleman, for example, in the universities. If that is one of the prime purposes of the Amendment, then Amendment No. 24 covers it completely, because what it is intended to do is to exclude university teachers and by doing that to include all other teachers in further education and in the schools within the terms of the 1962 Act. In other words, we are carefully limiting the definition to respects in which the Secretary of State has power to take action under the 1962 Act.
On the issue of independent schools; I must again make something quite clear which I tried to make clear in Committee. What the right hon. Gentleman is doing here is to set up a false premise and then ask me to knock it down. The false premise is that this is a Bill which will give the Secretary of State power in any way to control the kind of teachers employed in any school, State or independent. What the Bill does is not that, but to concern itself with entry to the teaching profession and with the registration of persons thought eligible for entry into the profession.
The regulations and control, such as there are, over the people employed in State or independent schools arise from the 1962 Act. They have existed since 1962 and will continue to exist under the 1962 Act. Up to now, as I explained in Committee and as the right hon. Gentleman has correctly said, my right hon. Friend has not proposed to direct the independent schools that they must employ teachers who are certificated, as now, or registered, as it will be in future. If he were to choose to do so, it would be not under the Bill but under the 1962 Act.
I hope that that resolves the difficulty and that I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Bill does not do the thing which he does not wish it to do and that it was never intended to do so. He has been talking about the 1962 Act and to that extent creating a difficulty for himself. I hope that with that assurance on the one point and that explanation on the other I have found it possible to satisfy the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. N. R. Wylie: In that case, what difference is there between Amendment No. 4, which uses the words
for registration under this Act
and Amendment No. 24, which excludes universities and theological colleges? Is there any distinction?

7.30 p.m.

Mrs. Hart: Yes, in that we are concerned with entry to the teaching profession and not with the employment of teachers in establishments. We do not wish in the Bill to seek to extend the Secretary of State's power to cover entry to that part of the teaching profession which is concerned with the universities.

Mr. Noble: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment made: In page 1, line 22, leave out "requirements" and insert "conditions".—[Mrs. Hart.]

Clause 4.—(SECRETARY OF STATE TO HAVE REGARD TO RECOMMENDATIONS.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 2, line 12, to leave out "1964" and insert "1965".
This is purely a drafting Amendment. It is intended to take account of the passage of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1965, which recently completed all its stages and which received the Royal Assent on 23rd March. This is the Act which provides for the payment of pensions to widows and other dependants of teachers who die without having completed 10 years' service. It is therefore appropriate to make reference to it in the Bill.

Lady Tweedsmuir: We recognise that this is a drafting Amendment. I would merely say in passing that it almost looked as if the


Government had hoped that their Bill, small though it was, would pass through all its stages before Christmas last year. That was a hope which could not be fulfilled. We therefore accept that the Amendment is necessary.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 5.—(COLLEGES OF EDUCATION.)

Lady Tweedsmuir: I beg to move, in page 2, line 45, at the end to insert:
to which he shall have due regard in the exercise of his powers under section 71 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962".
We had a considerable debate on this question in Committee. Many hon. Members on both sides will recall that the Educational Institute of Scotland was particularly concerned about subsection (3). As it reads, it appears that when the Council is dissatisfied with the content of courses provided within the colleges of education and it makes a recommendation on the subject to the governing body, and if after consultation with the governing body there is still no modification of the courses or the arrangements, the Council may make recommendations, if it so wishes, to the Secretary of State. As appears from the Bill as drafted,
the Council may report the circumstances to the Secretary of State".
After that the subsection ends, and there is no indication about what the Secretary of State will do after the circumstances are reported to him. In fact, there is no obligation on him to have any regard to the recommendations made to him by the Council on the subject.
We therefore raised this question in Committee. The hon. Lady said that she recognised that in Clause 4 the Secretary of State had the duty to have regard to the recommendations made to him under Clauses 2 and 3 and she therefore recognised that it would be more consistent if, under Clause 5, there were also a duty on the right hon. Gentleman to have regard to the recommendations made to him. In Committee the hon. Lady said:
I will certainly look at this. I recognise that there is a reasonable argument here.… I am prepared to agree that I ought to be consistent".

Therefore, I said:
In view of the explanation which has been given and of the hon. Lady's assurance that in order that she may be consistent with her observations on Clause 4 she will see whether she can devise a form of words which makes it a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the substance of Clause 5, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 23rd February, 1965; c. 123.]
I was therefore surprised to find that no Amendment was tabled in the Secretary of State's name to take account of this fact which, without doubt, causes considerable concern.
During the debate in Standing Committee the hon. Lady pointed out that the Secretary of State has certain powers under Section 71 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1962. It was therefore in order to make subsection (3) of Clause 5 consistent with Clauses 2, 3 and 4 that we proposed the Amendment which makes it perfectly clear that the Secretary of State
shall have due regard in the exercise of his powers under section 71 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962".
That Act gives the Secretary of State power to direct certain educational establishments, among them the colleges of education, to carry out any duties imposed on them, and if by any chance they refuse to do so the Secretary of State has the power under Section 71(b) to ensure that
the Court of Session may, on the application of the Lord Advocate, order specific performance of the duty".
Therefore, in order to make it clear that the Secretary of State has a duty to take into account the recommendations made to him by the Teaching Council, we thought it right that we should move the Amendment to clarify the extent of his powers.
Perhaps I should say at this point that the powers which the Secretary of State possesses under the 1962 Act are not entirely acceptable to all the teachers' organisations. I have, for instance, received a communication on behalf of the Educational Institute of Scotland which I think it only right that I should read. It refers to the debates in Standing Committee on Clause 5. The General Secretary, on behalf of the Institute, says:
I am very pleased that you have persuaded Mrs. Hart to reconsider the wording"—


that is, the wording of Clause 5—
and I hope that her reconsideration may be fruitful. An application to the Court of Session for an order for specific performance would be a dreadfully clumsy and very distasteful way of dealing with the matter.
I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware of the Institute's feelings. I had hoped that we would see on the Notice Paper an Amendment, perhaps, of the 1962 Act which would try to obviate what many teachers concerned with the Teaching Council and who support it feel is a rather clumsy and distasteful way of imposing a duty. But no such Amendment has been tabled and therefore I hope that the hon. Lady will see fit to accept our Amendment. We believe that it makes it completely clear, as Clauses 2, 3 and 4 do, that the Secretary of State must have regard to the recommendations made to him.

Mrs. Hart: The noble Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) is quite right in her quotation. I complimented her in Committee saying that she had adopted a reasonable attitude on the point that she was making. I also agree that I should be consistent. If two grounds are entirely comparable, then the two actions which result should also be comparable. This is what I mean by being consistent.
What I thought I should do in pursuance of my undertaking was to look at the extent to which there was a real similarity between the two cases which the noble Lady has quoted tonight and previously to see how far precisely the same words and the same duties should relate to the one as to the other. In that sense, I believe that I fully carried out my undertaking to see whether consistency required making a change which would meet the noble Lady's point.
There is here an important difference between the two cases quoted by the noble Lady. In the case of Clauses 2 and the Secretary of State is required to have regard, in terms of Clause 4 in the course of exercising his education functions, to recommendations made to him by the Council. In the case of Clause 5, to which the Amendment relates, he receives a report on a situation in which the Council has made certain recommendations and a college of education has refused to accept them. What

the Secretary of State then has to do is to take the report as the basis on which he decides what action it is appropriate for him to take. It would be inappropriate to require simply that he should have due regard to it, as the Amendment proposes. Very often, it would not be enough for him to have due regard to the report that was put before him. Much more might be required.
As the noble Lady has put the situation to the House, I should explain that the Education (Scotland) Act, 1962, empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations governing a number of the aspects of the colleges of education. With the establishment of the General Teaching Council, a number of changes will be necessary. Revised regulations will be needed to take account of the winding up of the Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers. At this stage in the exercise of his powers to prescribe the duties to be performed by the governing bodies of the colleges, the Secretary of State would propose to include in the revised regulations a duty on a governing body to implement a recommendation of the Council where it is required to do so by the Secretary of State.
Having said that the 1962 Act would leave it open for the Secretary of State to invoke the provisions that it offers him if the governing body of a college did not implement a recommendation, something more needs to be added. The noble Lady has not, perhaps, entirely anticipated the kind of situation that might arise in which the Secretary of State, on being given a report by the Teaching Council that a college of education was not doing what it had been recommended to do by the Council, would need to consider all the aspects of the situation. There might be some aspects of which he was knowledgeable but of which the General Teaching Council, by the nature of its functions and duties, could not be so fully knowledgeable.
For example, we are today in higher education moving slowly but to some extent towards specialisation by some universities in certain fields. The view is growing that not every university should seek to teach every subject completely. It is thought by many that this is a sensible trend which should be encouraged. At the same time, there is another trend which certainly the Edu-


cational Institute of Scotland welcomes, and which, I think, most of us welcome, to associate the colleges of education and the training of teachers more closely with university education.
If this develops to any considerable extent, there might well be a situation when the General Teaching Council—this is a possible situation which needs to be covered by the Bill—was making an all-embracing recommendation intended to cover all the colleges of education, possibly in relation to the standard of teaching of a certain subject. On the one hand, because he had an overall picture of higher education, the Secretary of State might know but the General Teaching Council might not know—because it has no duty to inform itself of this kind of thing—that universities in Scotland were tending to specialise in some subjects and that it would be inappropriate for a college of education which had a link with a certain university to be asked to do something more in a subject from which that university was moving away. That kind of situation is a possibility.
7.45 p.m.
In that event the General Teaching Council would correctly report to the Secretary of State, "We have asked colleges of education to carry out this recommendation, but one of them says that it does not want to do so." In the exercise of his powers under the 1962 Act, the Secretary of State would be concerned to see that a college of education carried out recommendations, but he would first want to see the totality of the situation, and it might he that from his overall knowledge he would arrive at the facts which he could discuss with the Council, which would throw a new light on the situation. For this reason, the cases are not parallel. Situations might arise when the Secretary of State wished to do something from his special overall knowledge which bore upon the recommendations that the Council was making to him and on the report that it submitted to him. He might want to look at more aspects than would be conveyed in the simple phrase "pay due regard to" the recommendations and the report.
I hope that with this kind of consideration in mind, the noble Lady will acquit me of any suggestion of evading my responsibilities to consider the matter and will agree that the consistency does not in

this consideration of the two cases offer a complete parallel. It is by no means inconsistent to have due regard in the one case but to expect that a little more will be involved in the other case.

Sir Myer Galpern: Would I be correct in interpreting my hon. Friend's remarks to mean that a situation could arise when the recommendations of the Teaching Council concerning changes of courses in colleges of education could be rejected in total by the Secretary of State after he had taken into consideration the other relevant matters to which my hon. Friend has referred?

Mrs. Hart: No. My hon. Friend will recognise that what we are considering here is the receiving of a report by the General Teaching Council about the failure of a particular college of education to carry out a recommendation which has been put to it. We are concerned here, not with recommendations, but with a particular situation which has been reported.

Mr. Wylie: I am not sure that the position is very satisfactory. It is correct, as the Under-Secretary states, that in Clause 5 the Secretary of State is dealing with a report, but the whole basis of that report is the recommendations which the Teaching Council makes to the governing body of a college and which the governing body refuses to accept. If the Teaching Council thought fit—the power is only permissive; the Council does not have to pass this on to the Secretary of State—to pass on the report to the Secretary of State, the whole object of the exercise, presumably, is to bring to the attention of the Secretary of State the recommendations which it saw fit to make and which the governing body had refused to accept.
It seems to me to be special pleading by the hon. Lady to draw distinctions between recommendations referred to in Clauses 2 and 3 and the report which is referred to in Clause 5. All three cases fundamentally deal with recommendations. It is true that the Secretary of State does not have to follow the recommendations. All that the Amendment would do is to write into the Bill that the Secretary of State must have regard to them.
I should be the first to concede that that is not important, neither do I think that Clause 4 is important. It was argued by my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) that if we set up a body of this nature with power to make recommendations, it would be necessary to write into the Statute that the Secretary of State must have regard to the recommendations. The Under-Secretary, however, dug in her toes.
If "have regard to" is as important as the hon. Lady made out in Clause 4, ipso facto it is equally important on Clause 5. Although the hon. Lady has made an ingenious and valiant effort to draw distinctions between Clauses 2 and 3, on the one hand, and Clause 5, on the other hand, it does not seem to me to make any difference.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I think that the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) has defeated his own argument, because he started by saying that these words were unnecessary.

Mr. Wylie: I said that Clause 4 was equally unnecessary.

Mr. Ross: We are not talking about Clause 4. We are discussing, quietly and sensibly, what should be done here. I thought that my hon. Friend made it perfectly clear that the power given to the Council in respect of colleges arises from regulations which exist, but which will have to be changed because of the coming into being of the new Council. This will be laid down by the Secretary of State. The regulations have to come before the House, and my hon. Friend has stated what the procedures will be within these regulations. I think that the purpose of reporting to the Secretary of State is not that he should forget all about it, because, as the hon. Lady rightly said, he already has obligations under the 1962 Act.
I think that this is an example of taking a hammer to crack a very small nut. Most of the difficulties which arise here will be settled by open and clear discussions between the persons concerned. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, we do not even lay on the Council a duty to report to the Secretary of State every matter about which it is

concerned. We give the Council the right to report to the Secretary of State, and to my mind it is fairly obvious that thereafter there comes into force the powers of the Secretary of State which are not exactly within this Bill, but within another Act of Parliament.
I think that the former Solicitor-General is right. I do not think that these words are necessary, and it is because they are not necessary that I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw the Amendment.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I am glad that the Secretary of State has seen fit to come to the rescue of his hon. Friend. As my hon. and learned Friend said in Committee, we greatly missed the right hon. Gentleman's presence there. Indeed, as far as I know he has made only one major speech on education.
During the Committee stage—and this is really the reason for the Amendment—the hon. Lady said it was essential to have Clause 4, which lays on the Secretary of State a duty to have regard to any recommendations made to him under Clauses 2 and 3. We sought to delete Clause 4 because we thought it was inconceivable that a Secretary of State, even the right hon. Gentleman, would not have regard to any recommendations that were made to him, but the hon. Lady was quite firm and said that it was essential to have Clause 4.
When we came to Clause 5, we said, "If it is essential to lay on the Secretary of State a duty to have regard to all these matters which are referred to him in the form of recommendations in accordance with the earlier Clauses, how is it that here no duty whatsoever is laid on him?". The circumstances are reported to the Secretary of State, but apparently he has no duty to have regard to them.
It is because we wish to help the hon. Lady to be consistent in her argument on behalf of the Secretary of State who was never present at our deliberations that we have tabled the Amendment. We recognise the point made by the hon. Lady that there are changing conditions within the colleges of education. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Argyle (Mr. Noble) particularly asked the hon. Lady what the position would be when the colleges of education became


more closely linked with the universities and then became degree-granting institutions, arid she said:
Any changes which were so fundamental and so radical in the colleges of education that they were no longer enabled to come within the ambit of the Bill would clearly require some consideration, and in particular some reconsideration of the Regulatons."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 23rd February, 1965; c. 122.]
What the hon. Lady was arguing was that the Bill as drafted gave the Secretary of State power under Section 71 of the 1962 Act, and that if the colleges of education were to advance in status there would have to be changes in the regulations. Therefore, what she was saying was that there was a duty on the Secretary of State under the existing Act, and the point of the Amendment is merely to make quite clear to all those who will have to read the Bill when it becomes an Act, which we hope will be very soon, that under Clause 5, as well as under the previous three Clauses, the Secretary of State shall have a duty to pay regard to any recommendations made to him.
After all, surely it is our duty in this House to try to make the Bill consistent. Those who have to interpret it, may have to do so in the courts, and may well ask, "How is it that Clause 5 lays no duty on the Secretary of State, while the other Clauses do?". It is for this reason that we consider it our job to try to make the Bill absolutely clear. We hope that there will be no disagreement between the Secretary of State and the colleges of education, but there might be. Clause 5 has been included in the Bill to deal with that, and we think that it should be consistent with the provisions of the earlier Clauses.
I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady's explanation of this matter, and to the right hon. Gentleman's support of his hon. Friend. I am not convinced that the hon. Lady is being as consistent as she said she wished to be.

Mrs. Hart: Does the hon. Lady distinguish between having regard to recommendations under Clauses 3 and 4, and looking at the report of circumstances under Clause 5? Secondly, does not she accept that, in any case, when the Council comes into being it will be necessary

to revise the regulations which impose a duty on the governing body of a college of education to implement a recommendation of the Council? That being so, does not the hon. Lady recognise that where it is possible to revise the reservations to cover one contingency, namely, the coming into being of the Council, should there be a fundamental change in the relationship between colleges of education and universities, it will be equally possible to revise the regulations to cover that contingency, too?

Lady Tweedsmuir: I consider that the recommendations under Clauses 2 and 3, and the reporting of the circumstances to the Secretary of State, which are, after all, the circumstances in connection with the recommendations, or, as Clause 5(3) says, the recommendations as modified, are the same thing. It is for that reason that I think the Secretary of State should have regard to them.
The hon. Lady asked whether I recognised that there could be a difference between regulations in connection with the colleges as they are now constituted, and the colleges as they might develop. I recognise that it is possible to frame regulations to deal with that, and that is why we provide in the Amendment that the Secretary of State shall have due regard to Section 71 of the 1962 Act. It is for that reason, and in relation to his powers in the exercise of the regulations, and in the framing of the regulations, that we have tabled the Amendment.
Although the hon. Lady has shown much ingenuity, I do not think that she has satisfied those who will have to interpret the Bill when it becomes an Act. However, as she has given an assurance that she, or the Secretary of State, will frame regulations which will take account of the fact that the Secretary of State must examine carefully the circumstances and recommendations reported to him, and take action on them under Section 71 of the 1962 Act, I will withdraw the Amendment, although I feel that the hon. Lady would have been well advised to accept it because it would have confirmed the powers already possessed by the Secretary of State. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 6.—(ESTABLISHMENT OF REGISTER.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 3, line 49, at the end to insert:
(c) provide for the removal of a name from the register on a failure to pay a prescribed fee and for its restoration to the register on the making of the prescribed application in that behalf and on payment of that fee and any additional fee prescribed in respect of the restoration.
Would it be convenient to take with this Amendment, Amendments Nos. 11 and 27, Mr. Deputy-Speaker?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Dr. Horace King): I have no objection. It is a matter for the House. The House agrees. So be it.

8.0 p.m.

Mrs. Hart: These three Amendments are closely related. I think that the noble Lady, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie), and, indeed, his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry) will be pleased by the Amendments themselves and the improvement that they incorporate, because they meet a point which was made in Committee by incorporating the provisions of Schedule 2 into this Clause, thereby simplifying the Bill and making the whole thing into a homogeneous whole.
I do not need to argue the case. It was cogently argued by Members of the Opposition and by some of my hon. Friends in Committee, when I was happy to give an undertaking to consider the matter and try to find a way of simply incorporating the Schedule into the Bill.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Unlike the situation with regard to the last Amendment, in this case we are really indebted to the hon. Lady for having taken the trouble to consider the points made in Committee, to delete Schedule 2, and to insert its substance in this Clause. We thank her for the trouble which she has taken.

Amendment agreed to.

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 4, line 1, to leave out from "of" to the end of line 2 and to insert "certificates of registration".
Again, this meets some of the very understandable anxieties which were expressed at fair length in Committee. The fear that existed among Members on both

sides concerned the risk of an improper disclosure by the Council of information obtained by it arising from its power to make rules governing the keeping of the register. There was particular concern about the nature of extracts from the register that were provided for in subsection (4,c), dealing with the issue of certified extracts from the register. We were asked what would be in the certified extracts, and whether there would be anything in them which would be likely to jeopardise a person's future.
In the debate on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill", my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Sir M. Galpern) suggested that instead of using the words
certified extracts from the register
we might use the words "certificates of registration". This would imply simply the issue of a certificate to the effect that a certain individual had been registered. This is what the Amendment does. There will merely be a document attesting registration, and just enough in it to identify the person whose registration is therein attested. This should mean that any fears that existed on the score of an improper disclosure no longer need arise.

Lady Tweedsmuir: As the hon. Lady has said, this was a subject which raised considerable debate and very genuine concern in Committee. I feel that the Amendment which she has seen fit to move, inserting the words "certificate of registration" rather than the vague term
certified extracts from the register
will meet the point which was in everyone's mind and safeguard the private and personal position of a teacher. We thank the hon. Lady for the Amendment, and gladly accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In line 11, leave out subsection (5) and insert:

(5) Rules made under the last foregoing subsection prescribing fees may provide for the charging of different fees in different classes of case.

(6) Rules made under subsection (4) of this section shall be published in such manner as the Council may determine and shall be so made as not to come into force before the expiration of one month from the date on which they are so published.—[Mrs. Hart.]

7.—(REQUIREMENTS FOR RECOM- MENDATION FOR REGISTRATION.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 4, line 15, to leave out from "prescribing" to the third "to" in line 16 and to insert "conditions".
Will it be convenient, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to take with this Amendment, Amendments Nos. 15 and 16?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Again, I have no objection. It is a matter for the House. The House agrees. So be it.

Mrs. Hart: It seems convenient, because all three Amendments are designed to clarify the same basic point. Subsection (1), with which we are now concerned, empowers the Secretary of State to make regulations prescribing the requirements to be fulfilled by an individual in order to qualify him for recommendation for registration. The words as they stand are
requirements as to education, training and fitness to teach to be fulfilled by a person in order to qualify him to be recommended by the governing body of a college of education to the Council for registration.
The three Amendments are designed to clarify the regulation-making power provided by the Clause.
I have already explained that whereas Clause 2 lays down the general duties and functions of the Council, this Clause is the one under which the Secretary of State may make regulations. The first Amendment, which involves using the word "conditions" instead of "requirements", follows on the similar change in Clause 2 to which the Committee has already agreed.
Taken together, the first and second Amendments modify and expand Clause 7. If they are accepted the subsection will read:
… the Secretary of State may make regulations prescribing the conditions to be fulfilled by a person in order to qualify him for admission to a course of training to be a teacher or to be recommended by the governing body of a college of education to the Council for registration.
In other words, we are making it clear that we are concerned with entry to the teaching profession at the point of entry for training and not only with entry to the teaching profession after completion of a course of education.
The doubts expressed about the Clause largely concern the difficulties involved in setting down in black and white matters concerning such points as fitness to teach. I quite agree, as I indicated in Committee, that there is a real difficulty here, in that we could not translate "fitness to teach" into black and white terms in regulations without making it clear that we would have to depend on the judgment of people. In other words, we would have to depend upon the principal of a college of education, who would have to be satisfied that a potential student would be a suitable student for training as a teacher, or upon the medical officer, who would have to decide that the student was fit, in physical terms, to enter a course of training to be a teacher.
We have tried to make it clear that references to the conditions that must be met before somebody can enter training to be a teacher, or enter the teaching profession, will have to be dependent not on satisfying the conditions set out in detail in writing, but on satisfying certain named authorities or officials of colleges of education.
It may be argued that even this is a rather difficult thing to indicate in a Bill. I would answer that in the 1965 Training Regulations, on page 4, the rules and conditions for the awarding of a professional certificate or a professional instrument, state that the candidate shall satisfy the principal of the college of education that his conduct has been satisfactory and that he shows promise of success as a teacher and shall satisfy the medical officer of the college of education in accordance with the directions given by the Scottish Council that he is medically fit to teach.
A named individual or authority must be satisfied that here is someone whose fitness to teach is without question rather than that this should be expressed in precise words. I think that it was correct that doubts should have been expressed and I have sympathy with those who expressed them. Here we avoid any doubt about what should be included in the Training Regulations. We have made the point which the noble Lady, the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. and learned Gentleman have tried to cover in a later Amendment. I hope that with this clarification and because they remove any possible doubt, the Amendments will


meet the points which were rightly raised during the Committee stage discussions.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I hope that my hon. Friends will agree that the Joint Under-Secretary of State has tried to meet the genuine concern expressed during the Committee stage discussions. In her explanation of Amendment No. 16, she sought to clarify the words "fitness to teach" to which I see has been added the word "generally"—whatever that may mean. I do not think that such a word is usually found in an Act of Parliament. We shall not move a manuscript Amendment to delete the word "generally", but I should have thought the hon. Lady might have persuaded her parliamentary draftsmen to leave out that word. She has seen the difficulty, which is very real, about the qualities necessary to define the words "fitness to teach" and so far as she can, the hon. Lady has sought to meet the points we raised. For that we are grateful. Busy though she may be, I should like to invite the hon. Lady, when she next has the parliamentary draftsmen sitting beside her, to restrain him from using words like "generally".

Amendment agreed to.

8.15 p.m.

Further Amendments made: In page 4, line 17, after "him", insert:
for admission to a course of training to be a teacher or".
In page 4, line 19, at end insert:
(2) Conditions prescribed under the foregoing subsection may include conditions requiring a person to satisfy such persons or authorities as may be so prescribed as regards his education, training and fitness to teach generally.—[Mr. Ross.]

Clause 10.—(INVESTIGATING AND DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEES.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 5, line 39, after "up", insert "from their own number".
We move on now to matters concerning the Investigating and Disciplinary Committees. In Amendment No. 19 in the name of the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), there is an attempt to cover much the same point as is covered by this Amendment, with the

addition of a further point. During the Committee stage discussions the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry) moved an Amendment identical with the one on the Notice Paper today. It was withdrawn on an undertaking given by me to consider the point.
Here there are two points involved. One is whether the Disciplinary Committee should consist entirely of members of the Council. The other is whether we should prescribe the number of members on the Committee.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. It will assist the House if the hon. Lady leaves the discussion on the second Amendment which has to be called, Amendment No. 19, referring to numbers, until we reach it.

Mrs. Hart: With respect, the second Amendment is to be moved by the right hon. Member for Argyll.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is not my point. We cannot now take the two Amendments together.

Mr. Noble: Would it be for the convenience of the House, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, if we discussed Amendment No. 19 with this Amendment and thereby got the hon. Lady out of her difficulty?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If that is the view of both sides of the House, I have no objection.

Mrs. Hart: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I think that we were involving ourselves in some little trouble.
We regard the restriction on membership of the Committee to members of the Council as being entirely acceptable. We intended throughout that the Disciplinary Committee should consist only of members of the Council. Clearly it was not stated sufficiently explicitly in the Bill, but this Amendment provides explicitly that only members of the Council shall be members of the Disciplinary Committee.
We do not consider it appropriate that their number should be prescribed in the way proposed in the Amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Argyll. I agree that there are precedents for this in the case of the disciplinary committee set up under the Solicitors


(Scotland) Act, 1933, but there is no limitation on the numbers for similar committees appointed under the Professions Supplementary to Medicine Act, 1960. The General Medical Council limits the membership of the Disciplinary Committee to the president and 18 other members, but imposes no limit on the membership of the Penal Cases Committee. We think it sensible and right that the Bill should provide that only Council members should be appointed to the Disciplinary Committee, but we think it sensible to leave the precise number to the good sense of the Council. This is one of those questions where it would be unwise to seek to circumscribe the General Teaching Council by imposing a particular requirement. The Council will be able to make sensible and wise decisions and we think that to prescribe the membership to its own members is as far as Parliament should take the matter. The rest should be left to the good sense of the Council.

Lady Tweedsmuir: We are grateful to the hon. Lady for this Amendment. We are disappointed that she has not seen fit to accept the content of Amendment No. 19. Would she be good enough to give an indication, so that it may appear on the record, of the number of persons she thinks it would be advisable for the Council to appoint to the Committee? The fears expressed during the Committee stage discussions were very real. Normally, when we find it necessary to have an investigating or disciplinary committee concerning one part of the country, there might be too many people appointed who are concerned with that district. While it is necessary that there should be certain people with local knowledge, it is surely also necessary that there should be others from a more independent standpoint, who can regard the circumstances without the local feelings which are always very prevalent on occasions such as this. Therefore, while we thank the hon. Lady for the first Amendment and will not press the second, I would ask her, before we finally incorporate the Amendment into the Bill, whether she would give an indication of the size of committees which she would like to see.

Mrs. Hart: I am afraid that I cannot satisfy the noble Lady completely. The difficulty is that the right size of committee is one which is small but not too

small and not too large. The Wheatley Committee made no precise recommendations. The Committee thought it right to leave it to the discretion of the Council. That being so, I think that it is right that this House should also leave it to the discretion of the Council.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 11.—(DECISIONS OF DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move in page 7, line 42, after "registration", to insert "or re-registration". This is a very simple drafting Amendment, designed to fill the gap in the requirements of the subsection under consideration. The subsection, as amended, would read:
When the Disciplinary Committee directs that a person's application for registration or re-registration shall be refused…
The difficulty is that the subsection as it stands not not require the Committee to cause notice to be given in the case of an individual whose name has been removed from the register and who applies to be re-registered. At the moment, notice must be given under the Bill as it stands in a case where an initial application for registration has been refused on the ground of misconduct by the applicant, or in a case where the name of the person is removed from the register. It is designed to tighten up this part of the Bill and to fill in the small gaps by making sure that re-registration is also covered.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Wylie: I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 could be taken together. If the hon. Lady is prepared to move Amendment No. 22, I shall not press Amendment No. 21. They are in exactly the same terms, and I am happy that the Government Amendment should be incorporated in the Bill.

Mrs. Hart: Mrs. Hart indicated assent.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I gather then that Amendment No. 21 is not to be moved, on the understanding that Amendment No. 22 will be moved.

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move in page 7, line 45, after "of", to insert:
the facts found to have been proved in the proceedings before the Committee and


As I think the hon. and learned Gentleman has appreciated, this Amendment is designed to cover the points made in the discussion of the Amendment in the name of his hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, West (Mr. Hendry), the effect of which would have been to require the Committee to include in the direction refusing admission to or making removal from the register a statement of reasons in the case of a conviction, particulars of the conviction and sentence, and in the case of infamous conduct in any professional respect, the facts proved. The point which concerned him and the Committee during that discussion was that such an Amendment was necessary in order to make sure that if there were an appeal to the Court of Session from the decision of the Disciplinary Committee under Clause 12, the Court would have before it the facts proved before the Disciplinary Committee.
I undertook to consider whether this was necessary and, if so, how it should be done. Having done this, we now feel that an Amendment here would be sensible and would cover the contingency about which the hon. Member was concerned. The Amendment is intended to meet it. I appreciate the willingness of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) to have this Amendment moved rather than his. We feel that, admirable though his Amendment might be, ours is a little more admirable and that it covers the point more completely and succinctly than his. I appreciate the fact that he did not move his Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 17.—(INTERPRETATION.)

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move in page 9, line 40, at the end to insert:
approved school" means a school approved under section 83 of the Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act 1937.
I wonder if I might move this Amendment briefly. We did not have it in mind that we should consider this matter of definitions in Amendment No. 23. Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the Committee to consider at the same time Amendment No. 25 and Amendment No. 24. They both concern definitions in pages 9, 10 and 12 and are

intended to make more precise the definition, for example, of "teach" and "teaching" and of the institutions in which such teaching is carried out.
Amendment No. 23 defines what an approved school is to be in terms of the 1937 Children and Young Persons (Scotland) Act. Amendment No. 24 has already been discussed. The third Amendment would carry out the final transfer of the definitions in relation to the Acts of 1962 and 1937.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 10, line 3, at end insert:
teach" means teach in an educational establishment (as defined in section 145 of the Act of 1962) or in an approved school, and "teaching" and "teacher" shall be construed accordingly.—[Mrs. Hart.]

Schedule 1.—(THE COUNCIL.)

Amendment made: In page 12. line 36, leave out from "schools" to "in" in line 37.—[Mrs. Hart.]

Mr. Noble: I beg to move in page 13, line 2, to leave out "70" and to insert "65".
Many comments this evening have been complimentary from one side to the other and the Amendments have been largely accepted, but I am bound to admit that I am a little disappointed with the hon. Lady on this one. We are moving into this brave new era about which we hear a good deal, and one of the features in our educational system is the increasing number of young people. I know and appreciate the hon. Lady's efforts, like those of my noble Friend before her, to entice a certain number of married people.
It seems a little out of line with the brave new world when we write into the Schedule:
No person shall take office as a member of the Council (whether on election or reelection) after attaining the age of 70 years".
In Committee, we went some way to persuading the Under-Secretary that 65 was old enough, considering the period of years they would serve on the Council, to bring them within shooting distance, so to speak, of the age of 70. In other words, I thought that we persuaded her that 65 would be a respectable age at which they would be neither too old to be useful nor too young to be out of touch.
It appears that the hon. Lady has not yet quite accepted this view, although the whole trend of industry, commerce, even indeed of Parliament, is to suggest that both for their own good and enjoyment and for the good of the institutions which they serve, the retiring age should be rather nearer 60 than 70. In this respect, therefore, the Schedule is being rather retrograde, although one realises that this is not a whole-time occupation and that there is wisdom to be found in people aged 80 and even 90.

8.30 p.m.

Sir M. Galpern: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that in Scotland we have teachers aged 80 and over in our schools and that we have encouraged people to stay on beyond retiring age because of the shortage of teachers?

Mr. Noble: I am well aware of that. As the hon. Gentleman will probably agree, particularly from his experience in the great city which he represents, the need for teachers in Scotland was very great indeed. I cannot believe that the same conditions will apply to the Teaching Council. I cannot believe that we will get to the stage when there will not be sufficient people in Scotland to man the Council. The hon. Gentleman is being pessimistic if he thinks that that could happen.
Within the context of the Schedule and the modern generation, looking forward to earlier retiring, and so on, to maintain age qualifications which were thought to be appropriate 20 or 30 years ago is not right and I hope that the Government will agree, even at this comparatively late stage in the Bill, and since so much has already been agreed between us, that 65 is old enough for people to be either elected for the first time or re-elected. Assuming that they will have two or three years' service, they will be reasonably and respectably old and their wisdom will have been given to younger people. To place the age at 70 is, I think, asking a bit much today.

Mr. Russell Johnston: I will make only a brief intervention, because I was disappointed at the emphasis placed by the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) on what is these days almost a fetish of youth, and I speak as a young

person. It is the belief that because someone is a bit younger he is necessarily better able and better equipped to contribute to something like the Council we are discussing. I do not see much difference between 65 and 70 as an age limit in this context or that a mere five years will make that much difference.
Nothing would be gained by acceptance of the Amendment and certain things might be lost. If the right hon. Member for Argyll was arguing that 65 is the age of spritely youth or if he had inserted 55 I might have seen the logic of his argument—the view that only persons within a certain age category were sufficiently thrustful to make the kind of forward-looking contribution which I imagine he is envisaging. As I say, the difference between 65 and 70, particularly nowadays, is not such that I would expect the Government to accept an Amendment of this kind.

Mrs. Hart: I am grateful for the remarks of the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston), because he was right. I did undertake in Committee to look at this matter closely. There was a fleeting moment when I found myself a little swayed by the arguments adduced in Committee but, then, we all have those moments when we believe that youth at the helm is the order of the brave new world—although I do not like that phrase or the Aldous Huxley connotation it brings out. It must have been in one of those fleeting moments that I promised to have a look at this matter very closely. I have looked at it very closely, and I have thought about it deeply. I wish that I could agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said.
There are one or two points that we have to bear in mind. The first is that the Wheatley Committee, which, presumably, gave the matter a great deal of thought, made the recommendation that is incorporated in the Bill, and we would need very solid reasons for disturbing that recommendation since, in general, throughout its consideration of the Bill the Committee has felt it right to follow the Wheatley recommendations unless there have been good reasons for not doing so. There have only been one or two matters on which we have not closely followed the Wheatley recommendations.
I was concerned to look at the precedents in order to see what the right hon. Gentleman himself had thought about these matters when he was making decisions. I looked back to 1958 and found that in the Teachers (Training Authorities) (Scotland) Regulations of that year, an age limit was set for the Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers and for the governing bodies of the colleges of education. I at once thought, "The age limit here is bound to be 65", the right hon. Gentleman having argued his case so cogently in the Committee, but I found that not to be the case——

Mr. Noble: I was not responsible there.

Mrs. Hart: No, but the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors were, and the right hon. Gentleman himself never thought fit to change the age limit. I found that 70 was the limit, and I have no doubt that had the right hon. Gentleman felt strongly about this he would have made it his business to make the age limit 65 rather than 70. He did not, and I do not think that he would suggest that the members of the Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers or the members of the governing bodies of the colleges of education have been particularly elderly or old-fashioned in their thinking.
The new Council has certain built-in guarantees from the moment it is appointed against any tendency towards great age and grave and venerable years. For one thing, all the 21 serving teachers, the four principals of the colleges of education and the three directors of education are virtually certain to be under 65—and well under 65. That accounts for 28 out of 44 members. There is no reason to believe that the representatives of the universities—four of them, of the central institutions—two of them, of the Churches—two of them, of the local authority associations—four of them, or the nominees of the Secretary of State himself—four of them, will present a particularly elderly image.
The most likely effect of reducing the age limit to 65 would be that we would risk occasionally losing the possible services of some outstanding figure who could make a really powerful contribution on the General Teaching Council. This

we would not want to do. Along with the increasing influence of youth there is also the generally declining extent to which old people are ageing. I hope that all members of the General Teaching Council will be young in their outlook—a great deal younger than 65 in their outlook—but, to ensure that, we have to allow for the possibility of having the occasional member over 65—and getting on to nearer 70—who could well be the youngest of them all in outlook. I therefore ask the House to resist the Amendment.

Mr. Noble: With the leave of the House, I should like just a moment in which to reply. I can see that the hon. Lady is determined to stick to her occasional greybeard, and perhaps she is right, but on every occasion, whether it be in respect of civil servants, or judges, or any class of persons, this argument is brought forward that there is the occasional man of great ability and that we should, therefore, make exceptions in his case.
I had hopes with this Amendment, because the hon. Lady showed some signs in Committee of agreeing with us. She described that as a fleeting moment during those proceedings, but I think that she probably feels that I am right. I rather agree with the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston), and would willingly have put the age limit at 60—but not, I think, 55. I thought it a good thing to try, once again, to get the age limit down to 65, as the hon. Lady had so nearly accepted that limit in the Standing Committee.
I do not want in the least to stop the hon. Lady appointing an occasional person of outstanding ability who is just on 70. I am certain there may be the odd one who will do very well, but I hope that when consideration of new appointments is made for this and other bodies it will be seen that in general it is a good thing to appoint younger people. Although I did not alter the Regulations made by my predecessors, during the whole time I was in office I tried to appoint younger people to these bodies because that in 99 cases out of 100 they are able to give more time to the work and are more up to date in their thinking.

Having said that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 2.—(PROVISIONS WITH RESPECT TO RULES UNDER SECTION 6(4).)

Amendment made: In page 16, line 38, leave out Schedule 2.—[Mr. Ross.]

Schedule 3.—(PROCEDURE OF DISCIPLINARY COMMITTEE.)

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I suggest that Amendments Nos. 29 and 31 can be taken together, if the House has no objection.

Mr. Wylie: Once again, I do not wish to move an Amendment if the hon. Lady will move the second Amendment, No. 31. It is almost identical with the terms of Amendment No. 29 and I am perfectly content that the Government Amendment should find its way into the Bill. Accordingly, I do not propose to move Amendment No. 29.

Mrs. Hart: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member. There is little between us on this matter. It is clearly a question of one point which his Amendment does not cover, but which ours would cover. We are agreed, as we were after consideration in Committee, that we are anxious to be quite certain that procedure——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: There is still Amendment No. 30 between Amendments 29 and 31.

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move, in page 17, line 36 to leave out "proceedings before the Committee" and to insert "the proceedings".
This is a purely drafting Amendment, a simple one which occurred to us as we went very carefully through the Bill. This is an improvement and cuts out two or three words. I think the House will find it acceptable.

Amendment agreed to.

Mrs. Hart: I beg to move in page 17, line 37, at the end to insert:
(f) for securing that where evidence is tendered which would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings in Scotland it shall not be admitted by the Committee unless, after consultation with the assessor acting under paragraph 3 of this Schedule, the Committee is satisfied that its duties under this Act require that it should be admitted.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I was sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but an Amendment must be made at the place at which it occurs in the Bill. Otherwise, it cannot be made.

Mrs. Hart: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, for interrupting me. I had omitted to notice Amendment No. 30.
There is nothing between us on the question of Amendment No. 31. We are all agreed, after consideration in Committee, that it is very important indeed that the rules governing procedure to be followed in proceedings before the Disciplinary Committee should have rules of evidence no less stringent than those applying in the courts. It was originally thought that the need to have the approval of the Lord President of the Court of Session for any rules made would be good enough, but it seems best to incorporate in the Bill itself an Amendment which brings in more precisely the requirement needed on the law of evidence. There is precedent for the original wording in the Bill in other legislation, but it is best to incorporate this quite clearly.
The Opposition Amendment, No. 29, had it been moved, would have had one effect which I am sure the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) will not mind my pointing out. Otherwise, I should have been happy to accept that Amendment The difficulty would have been that this very important provision on the rules of evidence should be part of the corpus of the rules and should not be a rather awkward interpolation or addendum to it.
Our Amendment incorporates the wording in the Bill at this point and makes it part of the corpus of the rules themselves. What we do here is to provide that any matter tendered as evidence in proceedings before the Disciplinary Committee shall, unless the assessor has been consulted and agrees, be as though it were in criminal proceedings in Scotland. In other words, nothing shall be admissible as evidence that would not be admissible in the Court of Session. I am glad that the hon. and learned Member for Pentlands appreciates the effort we have made to incorporate the point he made in Committee. The whole Committee was concerned that we should


tighten this up as far as it could possibly be tightened up. The Amendment is designed to do that. I hope it is acceptable to the House.

8.45 p.m.

Mr. Clark Hutchison: I agree with the hon. Lady that the Amendment improves the Bill from what it was in Committee, but it is still not entirely satisfactory. Why cannot the ordinary rules of evidence apply in the Disciplinary Committee? What special cases are likely to arise for which different rules of evidence will be necessary? Is the hon. Lady sure that, if there are different rules, they will work fairly for the accused? I see no reason for making this proviso. It is no argument that such a procedure has been followed in previous Acts. The hon. Lady probably has in mind the one dealing with the medical profession which is an English Act. In any case, if something has been done wrongly before, there is no need to repeat it now.

Mrs. Hart: If the hon. Gentleman studies the proceedings in Standing Committee, he will find that I dealt with this point very fully. That is why the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Pentlands (Mr. Wylie) is satisfied to have this Amendment incorporated in the Bill without requiring any further Amendment. It is for this reason that we feel satisfied that the rules of evidence here, with the particular exceptions provided for, as I explained in Committee, are all that is required.
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not happy about it. Had he tabled a detailed Amendment of his own on this point, different from that tabled by the hon. and learned Gentleman in Committee, we would have been able to consider it in detail. I should be out of order if on the consideration of this Amendment I referred to something which does not specifically relate to the words we are now considering.

Mr. Wylie: Although I have accepted the Government Amendment, I should make it clear that I should have preferred Amendment No. 28. However, that was not selected. I myself believe that the ordinary rules of evidence should always be accepted in any proceedings of a judicial or quasi-judicial nature. It was

only as a second choice, so to speak, that the alternative proposition has been put forward. However, since the primary Amendment was not selected, I am perfectly happy with the alternative.

Amendment agreed to.

8.49 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The hon. Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) referred to the fact that I had not been able to participate in the proceedings of the Standing Committee. I thought that she might have been glad that I was not there. I can assure her that it was a matter of considerable regret to me that I was not able to be there. She will appreciate that, if I had been there, I would have been the Government's majority. That majority was liable to be expected to be elsewhere on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the Committee was meeting. If the noble Lady or her hon. Friends would make arrangements on important Bills to ensure that I could be there and could be away to meet my other commitments I should be delighted to be on some of these Committees. This is an approach which has already been made to us and, therefore, she had better be careful about it.
The Bill led to fairly lengthy proceedings in Standing Committee, and the Report stage has seen the development of some of the points made there. Therefore, the Bill, which was important to Scotland and which certainly captured the imagination and enthusiastic support of Scottish teachers, has had fairly extensive and exhaustive tests. I thought that the Bill when introduced was a good one but I am the first to admit that the Bill as we now have it is very much better. Credit for that goes to hon. Members who served on the Scottish Standing Committee and particularly to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, and those who have followed the Bill through Committee and to the Report stage. It is an indication of the interest which this subject has for Scottish Members that there has been such continuing interest in the Bill.
The Bill follows very largely the recommendations of the Wheatley Committee. Some fears were aroused about the points


where we departed from those recommendations, but we have had opportunities for properly discussing those and putting forward justifications. Although we have not satisfied everyone, there has been a fairly ready acceptance that we were justified in departing where we did.
The Wheatley Committee devoted a great deal of thought to finding the right balance between professional and public interest in the matters of entry into the profession and the discipline of the profession and the rest. I think that what we now have in the Bill pretty well enshrines what the Wheatley Committee hoped it would become. The Teaching Council will not have unfettered scope in such matters as determining requirements for entry into the profession, but for the first time it will have a very large measure of responsibility, subject to the Secretary of State of the day and to Parliament. We believe that this is the right balance and that we have the right participation by the Secretary of State, authorised and watched by Parliament, in respect of how he accepts and carries out his responsibilities.
It is our intention within the framework of the Bill to ensure that the Council can act with an appropriate degree of independence and that we shall look upon it not merely as just another advisory committee. That would be hopelessly wrong. All our hopes would be dashed if that was what it turned out to be. Much depends on the acceptance by the Council of its responsibility, apart from the responsibility of its members as teachers, because in the ordinary course of its work we expect it to review the issues before it not in a narrow technical way but in the light of the requirements of the educational service in Scotland now and in the future. I am sure that hon. and right hon. Members opposite feel exactly the same way and that this is their hope also for the Council.
It was apparent in our earlier proceedings, and it was noticeable in the Second Reading days, that there were some fears that we would need to write into the Bill in Committee and on Report provisions to cover all sorts of events, which would really mean that the Council would have lost control of its senses and would be thinking only of teachers and not of the children and of education, and might well recommend or do something which would

be unreasonable. By this time I believe that these fears have been cast aside. I hope that if we can secure the passing of the Bill by early summer we shall be able to take in hand fairly quickly the necessary steps for the constitution of the Council.
Obviously, the arrangements for the initial election of the teacher members will take some time, but we have some experience of this sort of thing in connection with the governing bodies of colleges of education, certain sections of which are presently elected by teachers. I expect that the Council should be able to take office early in 1966.
Its first task will be to consider in detail the practical arrangements for setting up the Register of Teachers and, thereafter, the process of registration will follow. In the meantime, the Council will need to consider what it should recommend to me for the regulations governing the education and training of teachers. I should expect that, in the first instance, the Council would recommend the adoption of the substance of the existing regulations so that we have a proper carry-over in a regular way. I refer to the consolidated Training Regulations which were made in January and came into force in early April. There will be something like a transitional period during which the new machinery is put together and brought into use. Once the Council is fully established, I shall surrender the powers which I now have under the 1962 Act to issue certificates of competency to teach. I sat on this bench earlier and really itched when hon. Members started talking about fitness to teach. After all, there is a celebrated authority in St. Andrews which issues what we call certificates of fitness. Nobody asks what the fitness is for. I assume that it means fitness to be educated at a university. I think that it is far better to leave the particular phrase in point as it is in the Bill.
Here, we have a Secretary of State surrendering some of his powers, and I hope that we shall have some plaudits for this. People have been telling Secretaries of State for a long time that they should surrender their powers. I can imagine some people getting up and saying. "This is one of the powers you should never have surrendered". We must look at


the thing realistically. Whether or not it is wise to surrender powers in this connection can be judged by the degree of maturity and responsibility of the Scottish teachers, the professional organisations, the local authorities, and the others who will constitute this new body. I am confident that there is no teaching profession in any part of the world with more maturity, more real sense of vocation and more real desire to see progress in education in the broadest way than the Scottish teachers. It is because of that that the Bill is possible.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: I was interested in the point the right hon. Gentleman made about the powers which he is giving up. Does not he agree that one of the principal recommendations of the Wheatley Committee was contained in paragraph 103 of its Report, which suggested that the Secretary of State should not have the power to initiate regulations? That power has not been given up, and it appears to me that the present arrangements——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. We cannot now discuss what is not in the Bill. This is the Third Reading debate.

Mr. Taylor: I have no intention of——

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must listen. It is not in order on the Third Reading of the Bill to discuss matters which the hon. Gentleman, apparently, would have liked to be in the Bill but which are not in it. This is a matter of order.

Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid point. It is a point which we discussed on Second Reading and, where we could, at other stages as well. With that point in mind, I referred to the feeling that we had got the right balance in the responsibilities which the Secretary of State must have, having regard to the public interest, and what we were able to give to the profession from the point of view of its interest. I think that we have pretty well achieved what is desired by agreement between both sides.
I was saying that, by next year, after the establishment of the Council, I shall be able to resign certain powers which I presently have for controlling entry

into the profession. I shall do so gladly because, as I said, I consider that the teaching profession of Scotland is sufficiently mature and wise to be able to exercise these powers in the interests of education as a whole, not looking at matters from a purely sectional point of view.
We will also take in hand the necessary steps for winding up the present Scottish Council for the Training of Teachers and the reallocation of the functions now exercised by that Council. As recommended by the Wheatley Committee, some of those functions will go to the new Teaching Council and some to the proposed Joint Committee for the Colleges of Education, referred to in the Bill. There are a few of a wholly administrative kind which, again as recommended by the Wheatley Committee, in all probability will be taken over by my Department, particularly the payment of grants to students under the special recruitment scheme.
Many major problems face us in education. Not the least difficult are bound up with the recruitment and training of teachers. It would not be appropriate or in order for me now to attempt a review of the future in this regard. I am as likely to be called in order as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor). We can only speak of what is in the Bill. All our problems will not be solved by the establishment of the new Council, but I am convinced that it will bring about a new situation which will enable us to proceed in an effective way in co-operation with the teachers and the other educational bodies concerned, and that is a step forward.
This Bill was born in dispute. It may be, in respect of the teachers, that it was born in despair. It was born in a strike of teachers in Scotland, out of which came the Wheatley Committee, from whose Report we have the Bill. The education service depends on a partnership of teachers, education authorities and the Government, all working together in the interests of our children and young people. I like to think that the setting up of the Council is a development of the conception of partnership and one which will enable the teachers to play their part more effectively in the many tasks that lie ahead in Scottish education.

9.2 p.m.

Mr. Noble: Before we say farewell to the Bill it would be only right for me to pick up one or two points made by the right hon. Gentleman and to thank the Under-Secretary of State for the work she did in Committee and the way in which she accepted ideas which came largely from our side but were also supported on her side. As a result, as the right hon. Gentleman has said, we have a better Bill. Credit for the Bill must inevitably go, to some extent, as we said on Second Reading, to Lord Wheatley and his Committee and, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the broad drafting, if not the detailed drafting, was carried out before he undertook the great office of Secretary of State.
The Bill, with any luck at all, should bring new hope to the teaching profession of Scotland, although I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that its effect will go almost directly in proportion to the way in which teachers look at their duties on the Council as individuals rather than as members of particular parts of the profession. A great many problems will have to be solved in the years to come and some will need new thinking and perhaps a removal of some of the restrictive practices, if one may use that phrase, which occasionally creep into even as intelligent a profession as teaching.
I welcome the Bill. I wish the Teaching Council the best of luck and success in its task. I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman is surrendering some of his powers to the Council. He is right to do so, if for no other reason than that we want to keep as many of our teachers as possible in the schools and not drive them into politics.

9.5 p.m.

Sir M. Galpern: I, too, welcome the Bill, which sets up for the first time in the world a Teaching Council responsible for the registration of teachers and, if necessary, dealing with them in a disciplinary fashion and for raising the whole status of the profession.
The general impression so far created in the profession and among the public is that the Bill does that and that alone. However, Clause 3 contains as important an aspect of the Council's work, for the Council is to be charged with the duty of doing something about the supply of

teachers. The setting up of a register will become purely a formal matter once a registrar has been appointed and the general pattern of the work has been set out, but I hope that the duty laid on the Council in Clause 3 will become of paramount importance and a duty to which the Council will devote considerable attention.
We all know of the tremendous shortage of teachers in Scotland and elsewhere. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State are actively engaged in considering ways and means of stimulating the recruitment of teachers. There are many facets of this problem which seem almost insoluble. I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend is about to mount one of the most expensive propaganda campaigns to attract to the profession people who on second thoughts might like to become teachers.
However, I must express regret, as I did in Standing Committee, that in this work and in its recommendations about the supply of teachers the Council will not be able to consider remuneration or conditions of service. I hope that that will not prevent it from making recommendations about the value of grants to students in training. I would not regard such grants as being remuneration or conditions of service, and I hope that the Council will be able to use that as an instrument in its recommendations for stimulating the supply of teachers.
I hope that the Council will be able to make recommendations about the payment of full salaries in addition to pensions to those retired teachers who return to the profession. I draw the attention of the former Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble), to the fact that one of our main sources of extra teachers at the moment is retired teachers who have returned to the profession and who are paid a proportion of salary together with pension. I hope that the Council will be able to recommend that those people, who are helping in the present very difficult situation, should receive full salary as well as pension.
I hope that in the campaign to attract or regain to the profession married women, the Council will be able to recommend special tax reliefs, which I


would not regard as coming strictly within the realm of remuneration and conditions of service.
Unfortunately, we cannot ignore the fact that money is a very important factor in all schemes for attracting people to the teaching profession. Even though Clause 3 excludes from its consideration the amount of remuneration paid to the various chapters or categories of teachers, nevertheless it is allowed to make suggestions which might involve financial considerations which are not within the scope of remuneration.
It is in this respect that the Council can play a very important part. I hope that as soon as it is constituted it will get down to consideration of this important problem, because unless we have an experienced body, such as we will have in the Council, which devotes its time to this problem, I regret to say that it does not seem to me that we shall solve the pressing and urgent problem of teacher shortage in Scotland within the next 10 or 15 years.

9.11 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I make no apology for returning to the narrow topic which I raised in Committee, namely, Scotland's failure to take adequate steps to recognise teaching qualifications outside her own boundaries. It is my hope that the Council will use its powers to give urgent attention to the question of recognition of those who were trained not in Edinburgh or Glasgow, but in Poland, or Belgium, or the United States, or England. If it does this, it will, in a sense, do something to wipe from our escutcheon something which is rather blatant.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (SELECT COMMITTEE)

Select Committee appointed to make recommendations on the control of the accommodation, powers and services in that part of the Palace of Westminster

which is to be vested in Mr. Speaker on behalf of this House:

Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Blenkinsop, Mr. Bowden, Mr. Bowen, Sir Herbert Butcher, Mr. Robert Cooke, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, Mr. Malcolm Macpherson, Sir Harmar Nicholls, Mr. Pargiter, Mr. Shinwell, Mr. Edward Short, Mr. Whitelaw, and Mrs. Shirley Williams:

Power to send for persons, papers and records:

Power to report from time to time:

Five to be the Quorum.—[Mr. Bowden.]

REDUNDANCY PAYMENTS [MONEY]

Resolution reported,

That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for the making by employers of payments to employees in respect of redundancy, to establish a Redundancy Fund and to require employers to pay contributions towards that fund and to enable sums to be paid into that fund out of the Consolidated Fund, to provide for payments to be made out of the Redundancy Fund, to amend the Contracts of Employment Act 1963, to extend the jurisdiction of tribunals established under the Industrial Training Act 1964 and to make further provision as to procedure in relation to such tribunals and to enable certain statutory provisions relating to compensation to be modified in consequence of the provision for payments in respect of redundancy, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the issue out of the Consolidated Fund or raising by borrowing of such sums as may be required to be so issued or raised in consequence of any provision of the said Act of the present Session whereby, subject to a limit of £15 million on the aggregate amount outstanding by way of principal in respect of the advances, the Treasury may make advances out of the Consolidated Fund to the Minister of Labour for the purposes of the Redundancy Fund;

(2) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

(a) of any expenses incurred by a government department which are attributable to arrangements made with the approval of the Treasury for securing that payments will be made by way of compensation for loss of employment in the case of certain employments to which the provisions of the said Act as to redundancy payments do not apply, and

(b) of any other expenses incurred by a government department, other than the Postmaster General, which are attributable to any provision of the said Act;

(3) any increase attributable to any provision of the said Act or to any such arrangements in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament under any other enactment;

(4) the payment into the Exchequer of any sums required by any provision of the said Act to be so paid.

Resolution agreed to.

SCOTLAND (VALUATION APPEAL COMMITTEES)

9.13 p.m.

Mr. J. Bruce-Gardyne: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Valuation Appeal Committee Procedure (Scotland) Regulations 1965 (S.I., 1965, No. 403), dated 8th March, 1965, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th March, be annulled.
My sole purpose in moving the Motion is to draw attention to Regulation 4, which says:
An appellant or the Assessor may appear before and be heard by the Committee in person or by counsel or solicitor or, with leave of the Committee, by any other person:
Provided that—
(1) The Committee shall so give leave only if they are of opinion that no important question of law or of fact is at issue in the appeal.
I understand that a number of representations have been made about this Regulation by the Scottish branch of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and by the representatives of the valuers in Scotland, but that, far from being improved as a result of these representations, the Regulation has been made more restrictive. This has been drawn to my attention by one of my constituents, who is a chartered surveyor.
For once, I must say that I am rather glad to see that right hon. and hon. Members opposite do not have the assistance of any of the Scottish Law Officers.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): Or a chartered surveyor.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Or a chartered surveyor. I do not have one to assist me. On this occasion, I feel that I am entering on slightly dangerous ground for one who is not a lawyer. My only purpose in doing so is to draw attention to what seems to me to be an extremely restrictive Regulation, which has the

effect of introducing something which is rather reminiscent of a closed shop. I am opposed to closed shops in all shapes and forms. I realise that right hon. and hon. Members opposite have sometimes a rather more tender regard towards them, but I find them equally distasteful whether they appear in unions or in learned professions. There seems to me to be very much of what smacks of a closed shop in Regulation 4.
I have been told—I do not know whether the Secretary of State can confirm this—that this provision was included in the Regulations in response to comments by Lords Patrick and Kilbrandon in judgments which they delivered in 1962 when their Lordships criticised the
growing practice of appeals being presented to valuation committees by persons who are neither parties, counsel nor solicitors".
I should be prepared to accept that where important questions of law are involved in an appeal before a valuation appeal committee, it is reasonable that the appellant should be represented by counsel or solicitor. If pushed, I might even be prepared to go so far as to agree that in all the circumstances where an important question of law or of fact was involved, an appellant should have the right to be represented by somebody other than counsel or solicitor only at the permission of the committee.
The Regulation, however, goes a great deal further, because it lays down that where an important question of law, or, indeed, an important question of fact is involved, the Committee cannot give permission for an appellant to be represented by anyone other than counsel or solicitor. I understand that in about 95 per cent. of the cases that come before valuation appeal committees, no question of law is involved but important questions of fact are involved. As a result, the Regulation will have the effect of making it essential for an appellant in practically every case before a valuation appeal committee either to appear simply in person or to be represented exclusively by counsel or solicitor. Yet in most of these cases it is necessary for the appellant or for counsel or solicitor acting on his behalf to lead a surveyor or valuer in evidence. Thus, the only effect of the Regulation will be unnecessarily to increase the cost to the appellant of


making an appeal before a valuation appeal committee.
In the judgment to which I have referred, Lord Patrick argued that
A valuation committee is not a mere administrative tribunal. It is a court which has to interpret the law.
This view seems to be in flat contradiction to the view expressed by the Sorn Committee, which in paragraph 91 of its Report stated that the great advantage of the valuation appeal committees is that, not being constituted as courts of law, they have no formal procedure.
In the conclusion to Lord Kilbrandon's judgment in another 1962 case there is a sentence which, it has been suggested to me—and I am rather inclined to agree with it—sounds rather like an indication of a dispute between two professions. Lord Kilbrandon said:
A surveyor has no locus standi as advocate before a Valuation Appeal Committee.
I am reluctant to get involved in the business of swopping legal precedents, but it seems to me that there is rather a striking contrast between the wording of this Regulation and some other legislation which is at present before the House. We have just been discussing the Teaching Council (Scotland) Bill. Schedule 3, which deals with the procedure of a disciplinary committee says, among other things, that the Council shall make rules
for enabling any party to the proceedings to be represented by counsel or solicitor or otherwise.
Perhaps a rather closer analogy may come from the Rent Bill, where it is said in Schedule 3, paragraph 7 that either the landlord or the tenant may be represented before the rent officer
by a person … whether or not that person is of counsel or a solicitor.
A similar stipulation is made with regard to the representation of either the landlord or the tenant before a rent assessment committee under paragraph 11 of that Schedule.
Surely the considerations which have to be examined by the rent officer, or the rent assessment committee, are not very dissimilar from the sort of considerations which have to be looked into by a valuation appeal committee? It seems to me that there is no obvious reason which justifies the extremely restrictive and stringent wording of this Regulation.
I realise that in the judgments to which I have referred their Lordships explained that they were anxious to protect the interests of the appellant. That is admirable on their part, but surely the appellant in these matters should be given some credit for being able to look after his own interests, and to deny the committee the right to permit an appellant to be represented by somebody other than a solicitor or counsel wherever a question of fact is involved—not a question of law—is to suggest that the appellant needs excessive protection against the wiles of other than these particular learned professions.
It seems to me that in this instance an unusually restrictive procedure is being laid down which is inspired more by a desire to protect the status and livelihood of members of the legal profession than by a desire to protect members of the public. Furthermore, it is a procedure which, as far as I can see, is bound to involve an appellant in substantial extra, and I suggest unnecessary, expense.
For both those reasons, but particularly the second one, I very much hope that the Government will be prepared to reconsider these Regulations.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Hector Monro: Like my hon. Friend, I welcome these Regulations, with the exception of the first part of Regulation 4. When I was in local government I was a member of an appeal committee for some years, and it was quite obvious to the members of that committee that those appellants who were not represented by people who knew what they were talking about were in bad case, and were batting on a sticky wicket, invariably being caught out by the assessor. It would be quite wrong to limit the advice that these people may obtain to that which is given by the legal profession.
The assessor is undoubtedly a master of his facts, and it would be quite wrong to forbid the appellant to have the best advice that he thinks he can obtain, whether or not it is from a member of the legal profession. On many occasions, especially in agricultural areas, appeals are made on a wide range of subjects—fishing, farming, forestry, and so on—and appellants need professional advice which


is often far better than that which can be obtained from the legal profession.
An appellant might need the advice of a fellow of the Land Agents Society, or a member of the Forestry Society, or a chartered surveyor. He might want an ex pert on fishing—and there is no more technical subject than the value of salmon fishing. The expert advice which an appellant can obtain on any matter dealing with rivers is likely to be very much more advanced than he can obtain from the legal profession.
Even if an appellant cannot afford the services of a member of the legal profession, nothing gives him more encouragement than to have a friend—a friend who may be quite worthy to represent him. It is wrong to forbid such a friend to appear on behalf of an appellant. I therefore ask the Secretary of State to consider the question again.

9.28 p.m.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: I appreciate that our argument on these Regulations must be confined to them, but it is difficult to consider them in isolation because they are part of a group of three Statutory Instruments which detail the procedure and the time table to be adopted next year when we have revaluation in Scotland. When I received the three Statutory Instruments I was rather surprised to see, in the heading, "Rating and Valuation". This seemed to me to indicate that the Government had in mind that the rating system was here to stay—in other words, that there was no prospect of an immediate change in the system of local government finance.
First, we had the Statutory Instrument dealing with the time table. That was a good one, because it extended the period during which appeals can be entered in a revaluation year. Then we had the Statutory Instrument dealing with notices. Again, that was very sensible, because it gave people more details about their rights of appeal. When I saw these Regulations dealing with procedure, however, I was alarmed to see the new powers contained in Regulation 4. These are new powers. In fact, these are new Regulations, dealing with a new situation, and it is rather alarming that in these days such a change in procedure can be introduced in this way by delegated legislation.
The powers contained in the Regulations stem from the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1963, which lay down that Regulations may be brought forward providing for the procedure to be adopted at hearings of appeals by valuation appeal committees. I suggest that if we are to make a change in principle in Regulation 4, such as we are making, it is wrong to do so in this way. It would appear to be a most unusual use of delegated powers. I should have expected this to be brought to our attention before now.
It is stated in Regulation 4:
An appellant or the Assessor may appear before and be heard by the Committee in person or by counsel or solicitor or, with leave of the Committee, by any other person …
Many hon. Members will have had experience of appearing before a valuation appeal committee on behalf of a constituent and that is something which should be encouraged. Many people are terrified of a valuation appeal committee particularly in the circumstances in which the discussions take place and because of the place in which appeals are heard. It is unusual and regrettable that an hon. Member steeped in local or national government experience, and who is familiar with rating valuation law, should be prevented from appearing on behalf of a constituent.
There is more or less an obligation on people bringing an appeal on which some point of law may arise to be legally represented. It is unusual that an average householder should get more than £2 or £3 off his valuation. We are suggesting that in such cases, which clearly would not go to the Land Valuation Appeal Court, appellants should be represented by lawyers, possibly at a substantial fee, when the minimum reduction which they could hope to obtain in their valuation would be £3 or £4. This seems to be unfair. We should encourage people to bring their cases before an appeal committee. We call them committees and not courts, which I think is right because they should be informal bodies.
My objection to this Regulation is that in bringing forward circumstances such as are mentioned in the circular to local government officials a very important appeal involving a large amount of money or an important point of law is covered,


but so also are the cases of individuals who may be appealing in respect of a house valued at £10 or £12. To suggest that these people should have a lawyer to represent them, irrespective of the nature of their appeal or the amount of the valuation seems to me to be ludicrous.
Many people may be willing to represent appellants at a valuation appeal committee. When is it to be indicated that it is not proper for anyone other than a solicitor to represent the appellant? An appellant may take a friend or a counsellor or a fellow businessman to represent him. Are we suggesting that individuals who appear before the committee with their friends to represent them are to be told that they cannot be so represented? Because of the nature of the functions of these committees it may be that 30 cases are arranged for one morning and an individual might have to wait several hours before his case is heard. Are they to be told at the end of that time that they might as well go home because only a lawyer may handle their case?
The other point which I feel is a very relevant one is this: how is the valuation appeal committee meant to know if a particular point of law will arise before it has heard the case presented by the individual? This seems to me to be incredible. For example, I might have to go to the committee on behalf of a constituent next year. How can it say whether an important point of law will arise before I present my case? I know that there is a procedure open to us, that a formal negotiation between the individual and the city assessor is possible. If they do not agree, the case then goes to the committee, if they want it to do so. But how is the committee to tell whether a point of law will arise before it has heard the arguments?
This seems to be ludicrous. I hope that we will get an answer to this point. There must be one, or we cannot approve the Regulations. How can a committee say, before a case is heard, whether or not a point of law will arise? I appreciate that, in drawing up the Regulations, the Government have in mind the large appeal, affecting a large factory or a large commercial concern, but we must remember that the Regulations will affect the ordinary man in the street, going for-

ward with his appeal and hoping to get, at the most, £2 or £3 off. To suggest to him that he should be represented by a solicitor appears to be ludicrous. This is a very confusing situation for the individual.
I feel that many people did not appeal their valuations, did not go before the committees, because they were concerned about the complex nature of the procedure. Apart from that, I think that it is unreasonable to ask anyone to go to a valuation appeal committee when he might have to be represented by a solicitor. We want to make the procedure easier and more informal. This would seem to be a sensible thing to do. If an individual is putting forward his point of view to a valuation appeal committee, the majority of the members of which will not have legal qualifications—so that he is presenting his case to non-legal men—surely that indicates what the nature of the discussion should be. Even if some minor point of law were to arise on appeal, the great majority of people would not be interested in going to the appeal committee. The majority would expect sensible laymen in the committee to make a sensible decision and if they did not achieve their aim earlier, they would not go to the committee. If the Regulations are not accepted and amended Regulations brought forward, we would wish to have an indication of the level of valuations below which the Regulations will not apply.
It seems to me unreasonable, quite apart from the argument so ably put forward by my hon. Friend on the question of other provisions. This is a vital point, as to whether only a lawyer can represent people in a valuation committee adequately. There are many people in other professions who have a great deal of knowledge and experience in this. I feel that other professions can do this adequately.
So far as I am concerned, this is not the most important point. We should think of a second stage of valuation and of how we can make it easier for the individual to have his case heard without being overburdened with legal arguments or feeling in any way intimidated. If we are to pass these Regulations, I am convinced that many people will not bother to go to the committee, knowing


that they may have to be represented by a solicitor. More important, many people would not think of asking anyone else to represent them in the committee if those people might be told that they are not competent to represent them.
Would any respectable citizen go to his councillor or M.P. and ask him to represent him in the committee, when he knows that that man might be told to go home before the case was even put? This seems to me to be unreasonable. It is bound to discourage people from putting their case forward. I should like a straight answer on the point as to how precisely the committee is expected to determine whether a point of law will arise before the case is presented.

9.40 p.m.

Miss Harvie Anderson (Renfrew, East): I support the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) because I, too, was at one time a member of a valuation appeal committee. It is within my recollection that at that time the committee was not regarded either legally or generally as a court of law. There was considerable substance in what my hon. Friend said, because circumstances have changed greatly since valuation appeal committees were first established. At that time it was a somewhat unusual procedure for people to submit appeals and very few cases came before the committees. Since revaluation rates have been falling ever more heavily on householders in particular, the number of these appeals has grown tremendously and the importance of this matter to the individual has grown in equal proportion.
It is equally true that the necessity for a Form of appeal has become very great indeed because, since revaluation, the comparison of like with like has become blurred and the difficulties of distinguishing the reasons for the differences between one revaluation result and another have become the subject of sharp conflict within neighbourhoods and from one neighbourhood to another.
This is particularly true where county boundaries, such as those in my constituency, have come to approximate one with another, so that one has a comparison of a very wide area basis where

the assessor in each one of the areas concerned may have set himself, no doubt rightly, a different set of judgments on which to make a valuation. The ultimate result is that there has been a great increase in the number of appeals coming forward and a consequent increasing necessity for making these appeals because of the increasing costs at stake.
This has resulted in there being a very long queue of appeal cases in my constituency and this is a very telling reason why the valuation appeal procedure as a whole should be given sharp and acute consideration. There are many facets of the difficulty which this queue brings, none more than the question of timing. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) pointed out that it is not unusual for 30 people to be called before a valuation appeal committee in a morning. This raises a host of problems for all concerned. Even if 30 people are called in a whole day, the problems are only extended for many of those concerned.
In many cases a man who is self-employed and whose job cannot be done by anyone else is unable to give up the necessary time within 10 days—and 10 days is the statutory notice required to be given to make an appearance. For example, I discovered in my constituency that while the people concerned might have wished to attend the appeal, they were abroad attending to their businesses. If we want to have flourishing export industries with real enterprise among our businessmen we must expect citizens to wish to conduct their business activities in this way and allow them to rely on someone else to present their cases when they are unable to attend because their businesses claim their attention. As the Minister's predecessor is aware, I brought many cases to his attention because of this difficulty.
As to alternative representation, in connection with Regulation 4, if we accept the Regulations it will be necessary for people to employ professional, legally qualified persons to represent them. For those who are able to pay the necessary money for legal representation there is still the question of timing. As we know, legally qualified people, particularly in the west of Scotland, are heavily overburdened with work. It is not easy to engage the services of a professional man


at short notice, and, as I said, the notice here is only 10 days. In addition, it might be necessary for these legal men to spend a whole day waiting for cases to come up, perhaps only to be told to come back at another time, in which case I understand that the notice for the second calling is only five days. There is, therefore, very considerable difficulty in arranging for the professional representation suggested in the Regulations.
There is the other person, equally entitled to appeal before the valuation committee, who has not got the money to pay for professional advice. Here the legal aid system can be invoked, quite rightly, and one knows the difficulties. In either case, therefore, the citizen experiences quite definite difficulty in having his case adequately represented.
I have dealt with the position of the appellant who cannot appear in person but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cathcart has explained, there are many people who would rather not have their appeal heard than have to present their case personally, because it is something that they consider, perhaps wrongly, to be quite beyond them, and the case has to be presented in a formal atmosphere to which they are quite unaccustomed. So there is a risk here, which none of us wish, that some of those who have the right to appeal and wish to do so, cannot or will not because these Regulations include additional difficulties in making an appeal.
Therefore, in addition to his considering the very valid point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Angus that there are many others who are equally well fitted to represent such cases, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider the very practical difficulties that I have tried to bring forward. I hope that he may see fit to change, in particular, Regulation 4.

9.46 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon): We are all grateful to the hon. Member for South Angus (Mr. Bruce-Gardyne) and his hon. Friends for raising this matter tonight, as it gives the Government the opportunity of allaying some of the anxieties that they have expressed—some rather more vehemently than others. I hope by my

explanation to give some reassurance to those who are genuinely concerned.
Before doing that, however, I want to point out that the valuation appeal committees are much more in the nature of courts. Appeals from them go to a very senior court composed of judges of the Court of Session. It is, therefore, rather a mistake to go on the presumption that there is a parallel here in relation either to the Teaching Council (Scotland) Bill which we have just discussed, or to many other Bills to which reference has been made this evening——

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recollect that I mentioned earlier the comment of the Sorn Committee:
It is the great advantage of the present committees that they are not constituted as courts of law.

Dr. Mabon: The hon. Gentleman is flying in the face of fact. That comment was made in 1955 or earlier. I am not arguing the case for all the Regulations. Hon. Members have not referred to them all, and I assume that, in the absence of comment, the House rests content with them. Regulation 4 flows from a very serious comment, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and one taken very seriously in the context of valuation by Lord Patrick as long ago as 1962. Indeed, when the 1963 Bill was being discussed reference was made to this point. That is why I think that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) is a little unfair in claiming that there is a substantial point in saying that power to make this Regulation should not have been included in delegated legislation. After all, it was a decision by his own Government, and it is perfectly legitimate for us now to come forward and present this.
The hon. Lady the Member for Renfrew, East (Miss Harvie Anderson) has spoken of exporters, and the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) referred to farmers, and all the rest. I will try to deal with all the points I can, although I think that hon. Members will, on reflection agree, when they read the OFFICIAL REPORT, that we have had a series of contradictory speeches. I do not blame them for that. I only wish to point out that I am being invited to reply to a series of contradictory speeches, as I shall


seek to illustrate in a moment. They do not make my task easy in making this matter clear to other hon. Members listening to the debate.

Miss Harvie Anderson: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the form and shape which an appeal committee should take, will he say whether as a local councillor he has sat on one of these committees? We should be quite clear about the degree of informality which it has been sought to introduce.

Dr. Mahon: This is one of the points of contra diction. I am not selecting a particular hon. Member, but it is very difficult to reconcile arguments about the desirability of informality, on the one hand, with the very important nature of the work, on the other. The valuation committees are very much in the nature of courts because their work later, on appeal, goes to a very serious court composed of judges of the Court of Session. The whole corpus of valuation practice is based on the decisions of the Lands Valuation Appeal Court. As in other branches of civil law, there is a body of decision gathered together which is very relevant to decisions taken subsequently by all concerned in the valuation system. The situation is quite different from the examples mentioned in the debate. I do not want to dwell on them, even if I would be in order to deal with questions raised in discussions on the Rent Bill in Committee.
It has been the view that we had to regularise some of the proceedings of the valuation appeal committees. The fact that objections have not been made to eight of the nine Regulations is proof of the reasonableness in this matter. Regulations 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are in the interests of the appellant as well as of the valuation appeal committees themselves. Regulation 4, the burden of the matter now under discussion, is needed because experience after the first general revaluation in Scotland in 1961 showed—to some extent this invalidates the comment about Lord Sorn—that while valuation appeal committee procedure should remain flexible there was a case for introducing these Regulations governing these matters.
The Regulations, including No. 4, were submitted for discussion to members of the Scottish Valuation Advisory Council

and its agreement was obtained. The Lord President of the Court of Session, in addition to the Council on Tribunals, the local authority associations, the Assessors' Association and—the hon. Lady will be interested to hear—the Federation of British Industries and a number of valuation appeal committees were all consulted and none has objected. The objection came quite understandably from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and, I must put on record, from the County Councils' Association. They are concerned about this matter, but the concern of the County Councils' Association is somewhat different from that of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Like the hon. Member for South Angus, I would not trespass on an argument between two learned professions. I would not dream of intervening in a dispute where it is one closed shop versus another closed shop. I say that as a member of a profession which itself is a very good closed shop. There are good reasons at times for having a closed shop.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I do not understand the argument at all. If we have one closed shop calling another closed shop black it seems that we should denounce them both and oppose both.

Dr. Mabon: The hon. Member is not quite right, because we cannot denounce doctors—we have to have doctors. I am willing to accept that we may not need lawyers, although that might not sustain itself in law, or that we may not need surveyors, although that might not sustain itself much longer, but that is not what we are deciding. As a consequence of the working of the valuation system, the higher court, the Lands Valuation Appeal Court, has made some very severe strictures on the methods of working of the valuation appeal committees.
Because of this, it has been suggested that we should have this particular procedure. I accept that it is a new principle. I accept that it is a restriction imposed on the appellant, but the House must recognise that it is the clear intention that in the vast majority of cases—I use these words deliberately—the Committee will exercise its option of inviting the appellant either to represent himself or to employ someone to present his case.


Indeed, a survey conducted in 1961–62 demonstrated that about 60 per cent. of all cases appearing before V.A.C.s were presented by the appellant himself or herself. We see that there will be no change in that, because the arguments involved will be no different from those previously.
These arguments did not concern major points of law. They did not concern any matter to which the Lands Valuation Appeal Court took exception. This is the point. In addition, in about 20 per cent. of all cases the person concerned is already represented by solicitor or counsel. They will be untouched by this. We are left on the 1961–62 survey with a margin of 20 per cent. of cases which would be asked in certain circumstances to provide themselves with counsel.
As I understand it, the argument is this. I think that I ought to put on record the Opinion of Lord Patrick in the appeal of Alexander Russell and Company (Glasgow) Ltd. against the Assessor for the County of Renfrew, about which the hon. Lady the Member for Renfrew, East knows a great deal, as I myself do. Lord Patrick said this:
There is a growing practice of appeals being presented to valuation committees by persons who are neither parties, counsel or solicitors. This in my opinion is wrong. Parties cannot be prevented from presenting their own case in any Court though one often feels uneasy lest through their ignorance some factor has not been brought to light which might have affected the decision. Nothing can be done about that, but the matter is otherwise when ratepayers are represented by professional advisers. A valuation committee is not a mere administrative tribunal, it is a court which has to interpret the law, to ascertain the facts with due regard to the law of evidence and to apply the law to the facts so ascertained. What occurs before the committee is of great importance. When an appeal is taken to this court since we are bound by the facts as they have been adduced before the committee, the committee should have the ratepayer's case presented by someone who is qualified to interpret the law and is familiar with the rules of evidence.
It was on this point of unfamiliarity with the rules of evidence and the failure to bring out the facts fully that the learned judges took this very serious view. It would be wrong for the Government to ignore that comment.

Miss Harvie Anderson: Would the hon. Gentleman tell the House the amount involved in the case to which he

has just referred? Surely the case of Alexander Russell and Company (Glasgow) Ltd. is an excellent example of an appeal involving an enormous sum. The cases with which we are concerned tonight, as was brought out by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor), are houses with valuations of £10 and £12. It may well be that the same procedure cannot apply. It would be right for the hon. Gentleman to tell the House the amount at stake in the case from which he has just quoted.

Dr. Mabon: I cannot give that. All I can do is to concede the hon. Lady's point that it was a very considerable amount. The hon. Member for Cathcart asked at what stage we would sort out whether the Appeal Committee would or would not give permission for the appellant to act in his own behalf or to have someone other than a lawyer representing him. The Appeal Committee, which has some previous proceedings to go upon, otherwise there would be no appeal, and which is quite experienced——

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the Proceedings on Government Business may be entered upon and proceeded with at this day's Sitting at any hour, though opposed.—[Mr. Edward Short.]

Question again proposed.

Dr. Mabon: As I was saying, the appeal committees are experienced in identifying important matters of law or of fact, whether the appellants be a big firm, as in the case to which I referred, or, indeed, a local authority, whatever the amounts at stake. If by chance an important question of law or fact arose unexpectedly in what the hon. Member terms a normal case the committee have power to adjourn the case and review their decision on the matter. This, after all, is a point of protection for the appellant. The whole objection has been that because the procedure has not been followed out properly their Lordships have had great difficulty in hearing the case properly and, therefore, in arriving at a just decision. Surely the important thing for hon. Members to be concerned about is that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done in this


instance. That could hardly happen when the judges themselves were complaining about the previous procedures.
It may be argued that we should have done this the other way round and that we should have allowed the appellant to be the person to decide, but one sees the absurdity of that in that the margin of error could be greater than in the other case where the committee, by definition composed of disinterested parties, is asked to judge whether at that early stage counsel should be employed or not.
The Government will not take an absolutely blank stand on this. That would be absurd. My right hon. Friend's view is quite simple and straightforward. It is that the Regulations should be given their chance to operate and that we should keep a close eye on the proceedings and see whether or not this method works out to the advantage of all concerned or whether it may impose a burden on a few people. If it did impose a burden we would look at it again. The system must be tried and if it proves unsuccessful we must find another which would commend itself to the judges concerned.
The Government have taken this matter seriously. My right hon. Friend has consulted the Lord Advocate and has his complete concurrence in these propositions. The Lord President of the Court of Session has also concurred in Regulation 4 as it stands. The hon. Member for South Angus is getting very heated and jumping about in his seat, and I can see why. He regards the decision of these two distinguished officers of State as not being quite proper. He is suggesting perhaps that they are not disinterested persons in that they are lawyers. If that is so, he is taking a rather unfair view of them. Even if it were true the civil officers, if I can so describe my right hon. Friend and other members of the Government, consider the advice of the Lord President of the Court of Session and of the Lord Advocate as perfectly disinterested. In addition, the Government have the advice of the Council on Tribunals which is an important body and which can hardly be said to express lawyers' interests. The hon. Member should take that point seriously.
We have precedents in regulations under the Town and Country Planning

Appeals (Inquiries Procedure) Rules, 1964, and the Compulsory Purchase by Local Authorities (Inquiries Procedure) (Scotland) Rules, 1964. These have been examples where the choice of representatives is restricted to counsel or solicitors or other persons only with the leave of the committee concerned. As I said before, the Scottish Valuation Advisory Council has approved the arrangement in this instance.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: How could the valuation appeal committee decide whether an important point of fact or law arose before it had heard any details of the case? All it would have before it would be a claim for a reduction from one figure to another.

Dr. Mabon: I concede that the committee might not know, but, as I tried to explain earlier, in such a case, having heard the stated case at the beginning of the proceedings, the valuation committee could then advise that the proceedings be adjourned and ask for learned counsel to be present in order that an important point of law or fact could be brought out in conformity with the proper procedure and laws of evidence. That is the answer to the hon. Gentleman. But the advice given to me is that the valuation appeal committees in Scotland are so experienced in this matter that they could almost anticipate such a situation in the overwhelming majority of cases.
However, even if we are wrong, the procedure is still there to make sure that an appellant is given every chance of proper legal assistance, to ensure that, if he should take his case to the higher court, the judges concerned will not have cause to complain about the proceedings in the lower court because of the absence of a person instructed in the law to represent the appellant's case more adequately.
I hope that the hon. Member for South Angus and his hon. Friends will accept that I have tried to meet the arguments which have been put to me. The hon. Member for Dumfries mentioned the desirability of giving advice to farmers. He will realise that, as agricultural holdings are not on the valuation roll, farmers are really in the same position as anyone else occupying a dwelling-house. I need not elaborate on the kind


of person who might come forward. I imagine that a simple farmer seeking to get a reduction of the valuation of his dwelling-house would probably not require the presence of counsel and the Committee would not require it, but, if an important point arose, the Committee could ask for it.
I hope that I have dealt with all the points which have been raised. I have given an undertaking that we shall look most closely at the operation of the Regulations and consider whether they work as we hope that they will. If they do not, the Government are willing to reconsider the matter and come before the House again with a revised form of Regulations which the House may find more satisfactory.

Mr. Monro: What is the objection to an appellant having the right, not by permission of the committee, to choose the professional adviser he wants, a land agent or chartered surveyor, perhaps? Why should not appellants be free to have the professional help of their choice.

Dr. Mabon: With respect, the importance of having counsel present lies in the need to follow the proper procedures of evidence and to satisfy the judges of the Lands Valuation Appeal Court. It is necessary to ensure that points of law are clearly seen and appreciated at the level of the valuation appeal committees. If it is thought that a land surveyor or some other person is well qualified to present the case, there is no bar to counsel bringing forward such persons as witnesses. But what is clearly wrong is to expect a surveyor, accomplished though he may be, or any other person not trained in the law to conduct proceedings at an important valuation hearing so as to satisfy the senior court if the matter is taken as high as the senior court. That is the essence of the answer to the hon. Gentleman.
Despite our earlier, I hope, lighthearted remarks about conflict between the professions, there is no suggestion of putting these other professions in a derogatory or secondary position. The point is that in this instance, lawyers are the only ones who should be entitled to present

a case so that it can satisfy their lordships if the matter comes before the Lands Valuation Appeal Court.

10.10 p.m.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I do not want to take up the time of the House unduly, but I am bound to say that I find the reply of the Under-Secretary of State unsatisfactory in a great many respects. He accused my hon. Friends and me of contradicting each other without making any indication of where the contradictions lay. He dismissed the Sorn Committee's Report as being out of date. But the most serious point was that he showed that he had neither read the Regulation in question nor listened to my remarks about it at the beginning of the debate.
The hon. Gentleman argued that, in the vast majority of cases, the appeals committee will continue to be able to permit the appellant himself to appear before it or to be represented by whom he likes. With great respect, I say to the hon. Gentleman that he cannot have read the Regulation, which says that the committee can permit an appellant to be represented by any other person
Provided that—
(1) The Committee shall so give leave only if they are of opinion that no important question of law or of fact is at issue in the appeal:
In other words, if the Committee is of opinion that an important issue of law or of fact is at issue in the appeal, it cannot give permission for the appellant to be represented by anybody other than a solicitor or counsel.

Dr. Mabon: I would remind the hon. Gentleman that, at the beginning of the debate, he generously gave us the point that, where important questions of law and fact are concerned, the appellant should be represented by a lawyer. He went even further when he said that he felt that a lawyer should be representing the appellant in all circumstances. That is the nub of the argument. He can only choose one course or the other.
Either the appellant should be deciding or the committee should be deciding. Clearly, the appellant, being the interested party, can hardly be said to be choosing wisely or unwisely when the


wisdom of his choice is reflected in the later proceedings at the Land Valuation Appeal Court. That is the point of substance. It is judgment by the referee and not by the applicant.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I suspected that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to my remarks and now I am sure of it. I said that I was prepared to concede that, where an important question of law arose, it was right that the committee should not be empowered to permit the applicant to be represented by anybody other than counsel or solicitor and that the appellant should be prepared to accept that. I also said that, where nothing but an important question of fact arose, there was no reason why the committee should not be empowered to permit the applicant to be represented by somebody other than a solicitor or counsel. What I object to most of all is that this Regulation says that the committee is free so to decide only where it is of opinion
… that no important question of law or fact …
arises.
The hon. Gentleman said that it was right that the committee should be free to decide but that is not what the Regulation does. As a result, if the figures I have given are correct, and in 95 per cent. of these cases a question of fact does arise—and that would seem inevitable—it is untrue to say that, in the vast majority of cases, there will be no difference. There is bound to be a difference. The committee has no power to decide this.

Dr. Mabon: Perhaps I may try again. The hon. Gentleman keeps referring to a figure of 95 per cent. of cases. If, say, there is an argument concerning a valuation which is £2 or £10 more, that is hardly an important point of fact unless it is also taken with an important point

of law. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets his figure. Perhaps he will enlighten us. If he means the bulk of appeals, I believe that I have demonstrated that they will not be affected by this and cannot be affected because they will not be defined by the committee as involving an important point of law or of fact.

Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I am bound to say that that gives me some relief, but, nevertheless, my understanding is that in almost all these cases an important point of fact would be considered to arise. I cannot understand why the Government should consider it necessary to forbid the committee from making up its own mind on these issues and to deny it the right to permit an applicant to be represented by someone other than counsel or a solicitor, at any rate when an important point of law is not considered to arise.
This is the main issue in this whole discussion and I am sorry that the Under-Secretary does not agree with me. The fact of the matter is that to the layman the whole of the Regulation smacks of a closed shop set up for the benefit of one profession to the exclusion of others, and one which is bound to involve the general run of applicants—and particularly applicants in small cases with which all my hon. Friends have been most particularly concerned and which are obviously the bulk of the appeals and much the most important—in substantial extra and unnecessary expense. Nothing the Under-Secretary has said has in any way removed my very substantial objections to the Regulation.

Question put and negatived.

ESTIMATES

Mr. John Hall discharged from the Estimates Committee; Mr. Stainton added.—[Mr. Howie.]

TRANSPORT (MANCHESTER AND SOUTH LANCASHIRE)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Howie.]

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Charles Morris: The vision of a single public transport authority spanning south Lancashire from the Ribble to the Mersey, from Preston in the north to Manchester and Liverpool in the south-east and south-west, is one which has captured the imagination of many in municipal transport in the North-West since public passenger road transport systems first came into being as a consequence of the Tramways Act of 1870.
Increasingly, traffic and social conditions in contemporary Lancashire, particularly in the conurbations, are fast producing a situation in which the road passenger transport industry will be obliged to consider far-reaching measures of reorganisation. Amalgamations within, and thereby rationalisation of, that area of the industry coming under local authority control is now imperative.
The present position in the area to which I am referring is that approximately 24 separate local authorities maintain independent public transport undertakings. In addition, there are five private company operators. In the Greater Manchester area alone nine municipal transport authorities plus three private bus companies serve a population of just over 2 million, using 2,768 vehicles and running nearly 100 million miles a year.
This is the extent of the problem which has arisen from the understandable desire of local authorities to have a say in the control of local transport services. However, to my mind it is a heavy price to pay to travel under the banner of local autonomy.

Mr. Dennis Hobden: Would not my hon. Friend agree that if these were private companies with private money someone like Charles Clore or Cecil King would have come along and rationalised the lot?

Mr. Morris: That is a valid and fair point to make.
A number of questions are prompted in any consideration of the present public transport situation. The first which comes to mind is this: is municipal transport in south Lancashire organised as efficiently as it might be to meet the change in social conditions? Is it equipped to cater for the future needs of the communities which it serves? Are the travelling public—the commuters—getting value for money? Can the system be improved by amalgamation and reorganisation? The one dominant factor facing public passenger transport during the last 10 years has been the tremendous development of the motor vehicle for private use. At present, one in three families have their own car. In 10 years' time the figure will be one in two.
But, despite the attractions of the private motor car, there will continue to be a considerable demand, and indeed necessity, for public transport. Even within the family there will be diversity of travel and some members will need to use public transport. Also we should never lose sight of the need to provide transport for the old, the infirm and the young.
Apart from the popularity of the motor car and the fact that members of a family no longer of necessity have to live, work and be educated and enjoy their recreation in one and the same township, factories have ceased to be concentrated in squalid industrial areas, and living space, educational establishments and commercial activity have spread beyond the confines of local authority boundaries which are fast losing any practical significance and merely serve to restrict the operating area of the municipal operator, thus virtually excluding them from the more profitable area of public transport, the long distance service. It is a source of wonderment to many that a passenger cannot travel by municipal bus from Manchester to Liverpool without having constantly to change buses.
It is factors such as these which have contrived to create a situation in which a great number of municipal operators find themselves with increasing financial commitments because administrative and overhead costs are mounting while the number of passengers carried—and consequently revenue—is declining. If one needs confirmation of this fact, it is to be found in the Report of the British


Transport Holding Company for 1963. Incidentally, this company has substantial holdings in private bus companies in the North-West.
In the paragraph headed "Outlook for Road Passenger Interests," it states:
The volume of passenger travel by the basic stage-carriage bus will almost certainly undergo a slow decline … Services outside the heavily congested area will be more vulnerable than those within though the latter will have to cope with the problem of the 'peak' on an increasing scale.
A number of municipalities have endeavoured to meet changing social conditions arid to improve their efficiency by entering into inter-operation agreements with contiguous municipal operators. For example, Salford, Ashton, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Stockport and the Stalybridge-Hyde-Mossley Joint Board now run their buses in and out of the City of Manchester. It is now possible for a passenger in Manchester to Board any of 57 services at stages within the City which are the subject of inter-operation. On one particular route, the intending passenger may board a bus of any one of four different operators.
This sounds quite an advance until one starts looking at the anomalies which inter-operation throws up. The fares collected on these services have to be arrived at on the basis of the distance travelled within each operator's area. The revenue collected by different authorities has to be apportioned to the inter-operators according to agreed results of revenue checks. The administrative procedures involved in the consequential mathematical computations are legion. In this regard, I am obliged to the distinguished Chief Accountant of the Manchester Corporation Transport Department, Mr. H. K. Greaves, for the very informed and lucid memorandum on this subject which he has made available to me.
It is my view that amalgamations of the kind which I should like to see come into being would obviate many of the problems which now exist and which make the municipal operator better fitted to meet the changed social conditions.
My association with municipal transport convinces me that it has a future, and not solely in the provision of buses. Monorail developments must be a consideration in the future development of major cities such as Liverpool and Man-

chester. Underground tube systems making access to city centres for the out-of-town shopper and commuter are a field in which municipal transport can expand, but capital requirements will necessitate larger groupings of capital resources.
The existing multiplicity of municipal bus undertakings each separately administered and controlled, with fares structures, passenger regulations and operating standards completely independent of each other, has given rise to anomalies which in their effect on passengers travelling within adjacent municipal areas must leave the individual passenger incredulous and perplexed.
Examining the 13 Acts of Parliament and regulations governing the operations of eight of the municipal undertakings in the south Lancashire area produces the following information. Children's fares, it would seem, vary according to the municipality controlling the buses. Generally speaking, children up to the age of 17 enjoy half fares, but this has not prevented some authorities from restricting the concession by imposing time limits on the period of validity. One local authority restricts the concession to travelling to and from school, whilst another designates the time of attendance at school as
until 5.30 p.m. Monday to Friday
whilst a third adds, somewhat ominously,
attending school providing that children over 14 wear school uniform with badge".
Dogs are the subject of a number of conflicting regulations. Generally speaking, corporations may charge any sum they wish not exceeding the fare payable by the passenger in charge of the dog. One municipal undertaking carries dogs free, adding in brackets "if not large", whilst another adds the proviso "Free (if of reasonable size)", and adds, "in charge of passengers". The mother with her pram finds that her decision to travel by bus is influenced by whether the vehicle provided by the local authority has sufficient luggage space to carry her pram. The recently-introduced travel concession to the elderly in application has caused a host of further anomalies. Whether the elderly gain the concession depends upon the financial position of the individual undertaking or local council.
The advantages likely to flow from bringing municipal transport authorities


in South Lancashire under greater centralised control are, first, a common fares scale, in both fares and distances. Conditions of travel would be common on all vehicles and throughout the area. Closer co-ordination of local maintenance facilities would follow. There would be a more even mixing of the remunerative and less remunerative services in the area and uniformity in the conditions of service for staff. There would also be an appreciable saving in administrative costs. These are vital considerations which, I hope, will command the support of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary tonight.
Looking at the position of public transport in relation to Parliament, it is true to say that Salford Corporation——

Mr. Stanley Orme: Is my hon. Friend aware that Salford Corporation first posed this matter in Parliament in 1929, in a Private Bill seeking powers to create the South-East Lancashire Tramways and Omnibus Board?

Mr. Morris: I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme), because I fully appreciate the interest which he has shown in public transport in that city over a long number of years.
The point made by my hon. Friend is quite correct. As he says, it was the Salford Corporation which first posed this issue to Parliament in 1929 in a Bill seeking powers to create the South-East Lancashire Tramways and Omnibus Board. At that time, however, notwithstanding the rejection of the Bill, it is reported that the Chairman of the House of Commons Committee which had considered the provisions of the Bill stated that the Committee favoured a larger comprehensive scheme.
Again, in 1947, the Transport Act of that year envisaged area passenger transport schemes, and in consequence a pilot scheme in the North-East was proposed. Unfortunately, that scheme never got off the ground, because the local authorities at that time were already in the process of losing control of a number of public utilities and a number of local authorities favoured municipal joint boards.
Regardless of the schemes or groupings which ultimately emerge, I ask my hon. Friend this evening to bring his influence

and authority to bear to rationalise the organisation of municipal passenger public transport in the south Lancashire area. The impending publication of the survey of transport in the North-West may very well provide the basis on which reorganisation could get under way. Having said that, I thank him in anticipation of the consideration which he will give to this issue, and I would leave him with one thought: in this problem, urgency has never been more urgent.

10.31 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler): This is a very important subject and I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Openshaw (Mr. Charles Morris) for having raised it. We in the House all know that he has substantial and valuable experience in the administration of transport, and he has put a very powerful case.
The provision of good public transport is, we recognise, a very important element in grappling with the problem of the future development of our urban areas, and I want to say right away that my right hon. Friend will be very glad at any time to consider any proposals for the improvement of urban public transport, and all the points which my hon. Friend has raised, and which have been interpolated by some of my other hon. Friends into his speech, will be studied very carefully in my Department.
We recognise that this is, of course, not just a local problem in south Lancashire. It is a problem which has national implications. The question whether there should be more amalgamations of municipal public transport is by no means confined to the Manchester and south Lancashire area. We find it in London and other areas—Yorkshire, the Midlands, and also in the North-East—but the area with which my hon. Friend is concerned, and part of which he represents, does demonstrate the issue very clearly.
As my hon. Friend has said, in the Manchester and south Lancashire area there is a multiplicity of local authority transport undertakings and there is also a network provided by other operators, partially publicly owned, partially privately owned—Ribble, Lancashire United Transport, and the North Western


Road Car Company. There is a good deal of inter-working between the municipal undertakings, and between them and the company operators. As my hon. Friend has said, some routes are operated by as many as four undertakings. Indeed, within my hon. Friend's own constituency there is the Manchester-Glossop route in which the Manchester and Ashton-under-Lyne Corporations, the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield Joint Board and the North Western Road Car Company are all concerned.
Such inter-workings do, of course, involve some very complex arrangements between the undertakings in one another's territories and in the share out of the revenue received. The joint workings to which my hon. Friend draws attention have been devised to meet a particular situation where the boundaries of those operators overlap. These arrangements allow passengers to travel from one area to another without having to change vehicles at local authority boundaries. Generally speaking, the arrangements are practical, and my Department receives little complaint from the travelling public atom them. The traffic commissioners can ensure that fares on these joint services are co-ordinated, though, as my hon. Friend emphasised, there are bound to be anomalies between one undertaking and another.
We recognise that the benefits of amalgamation lie in the operating sphere. Undertakings covering larger areas might well be able to provide more efficient and competent services, combined fleets, combined services, savings of maintenance and office staffs, less book-keeping, and so on.
We have inherited a situation, the anomalies of which are historical. Local authorities derive their powers from local Acts built up over the years from the days of the trams, and the company operators have also built up important stakes in these areas. They depend on certain more profitable routes to support services over wider areas of less profitable routes, and the licensing system operated by the traffic commissioners holds the balance between these different kinds of operators.
The traffic commissioners cannot actually impose any mergers of undertakings, and, therefore, it is quite right——

Mr. Charles Mapp: My hon. Friend referred to the need for wider operational areas. Would he direct his mind to the limitations of the 1930 Act? Various corporations can carry their workers, frequently at less than the normal cost, for five days a week, but, by a dogmatic Act of Parliament, they are precluded from carrying those same workers to Brighton or to Blackpool for a week end's enjoyment. Those limitations have been imposed on them by dogma. If they had freedom to carry their workers at the weekend, their vehicles would be in use for seven days a week, and their men would not suffer a loss in earnings. In addition, of course, their overheads would be reduced.

Mr. Swingler: My hon. Friend has made a powerful point. Unfortunately, I have not the time to go into great detail about it. I recognise that we have inherited a number of obsolescent provisions in this matter. The 1930 Act may be one of them, and we shall be going into that matter in more detail.
It is right that my hon. Friend should call on us to take a new look at the whole situation, because of the great number of anomalies, inefficiencies, obsolete doctrines, and so on, which have created difficulties. My hon. Friend referred to the fact that a new look was being taken over a wide field at conurbation transport, and in particular at transport in areas such as those to be found in many parts of Lancashire.
The proposal to amalgamate municipal bus services in an area like south Lancashire raises the whole wider question of the future of public transport, which requires very careful and thorough study. It is not only a matter of the municipal undertakings. It is a question of the future of the railways, and the future of other services provided in the more rural areas.
The Buchanan Report stresses the utter futility of trying to plan our cities on the basis of the private motor car, and the inevitable congestion which the extension of private motor car transport, with all the advantages that it offers to families, leads to in our cities. It is generally accepted that in urban areas the bus services, and in many places the suburban railways, as well as new forms of transport like the monorail, have a vital part to play in carrying peak hour


commuter traffic, and in providing an essential public service in off peak hours.
It is also widely recognised that the future pattern of land use has a profound influence on transport requirements. This, of course, is a lesson which has been learned in London, where office building schemes have been allowed in the very centre of the city without due provision having been made for the transport requirements of the workers using those offices; and that is the reason why, under an intelligent Government, something is being done by way of a Bill already before the House.
It follows that we must plan the development of public transport as part of the general planning of our cities and the traffic arrangements in them, and that is why the Government attach such importance to the comprehensive land use-transport studies now being undertaken in most of the conurbations and in some of the free-standing towns.
One of these studies is already in hand in the area which covers my hon. Friend's constituency and I should like to take this opportunity to say something about the aims and methods of the south-east Lancashire and north-east Cheshire conurbation study and to indicate how the results will help Manchester and the other local authorities concerned to make better plans for a co-ordinated development both of roads and of public transport so as to fit in with their general plans for redevelopment.
This study is being undertaken by a firm of consulting engineers under the general control of a steering committee on which all the local authorities concerned, together with transport operators and Government Departments are represented. The study has set itself the most challenging objectives. First, the existing pattern of movement of passengers and goods, by rail as well as by road, by public as well as by private transport, will be surveyed in detail.
At the same time, detailed information will be collected on the distribution of land uses, population, employment, car ownership, and all the other factors which affect the demand for transport. The aim is to establish the precise relationships

between these factors and the transport demands which they generate. The next step will be to use the basic transport relationships to project forward the pattern, in detail, of future demand, associated with the forecast changes in land use, population, car ownership, and so on.
The third stage will be to prepare alternative transportation plans covering road and public transport systems, in an endeavour to find a system which will ensure the best use, and the best balance, of public and private transport. Inevitably, this process will take some time to complete, and planning the study itself is an immensely complex task; indeed, I can tell the House that the consultants are still working on a detailed design study. After this study has been completed and approved by the steering committee, the whole project will probably take up to three years to complete. The survey in this area will give us essential information on which to base future transport planning in the Manchester and South Lancashire areas.
Until we have these results, we cannot forecast exactly what the best solution to the transport problems will be. It may well be that a quite new pattern of public transport, both by road and by rail, will be required throughout the conurbation. Certainly, I am convinced that radical changes will be required in the structure and the organisation of transport. However the system may work at present, the needs of the conurbations in the decades ahead will require the most comprehensive planning on the basis of scientific data.
We therefore hope that all the parties who are at present concerned in the provision of transport in these localities will not be afraid of new ideas, that they will accept the challenge of the need to plan the use of land and transport together on the most comprehensive basis, and that they will work with us with a real sense of urgency to achieve and implement the new schemes which—my hon. Friend is undoubtedly right—will be required for the future benefit of our people.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at a quarter to Eleven o'clock.